Imploding The Mirage

The Killers

 

We can become awfully attached to the mirages in our life – even the ones we know full well are calling us to drink sand. But we can’t find freedom until we see the chains. The Killers’ Brandon Flowers has been about the business of disassembling chains, one vision at a time, for years. On 2017’s Wonderful Wonderful he and the band dove deep, untangling issues of depression and despair that he saw his wife, Tara, experiencing as a result of Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. With rare candor, Flowers opened up about his wife’s experiences and what they were doing as a couple, and a family (they have three children) to help her survive. It involved counseling, to be certain, but Flowers also decided to move the family away from Las Vegas, where he had lived most of his life and where he and Tara had met, and to move back to Utah. Las Vegas was too full of dark memories and pain for his wife and she was the priority. Wonderful Wonderful – even its sarcastic dancefloor hit “I’m The Man,” was a dense, and mostly dark, ambient affair about the inner journey.

 

Imploding The Mirage is the kind of big, bombastic, swing for the fences type of stadium-sized modern pop record that critics live to hate. It’s earnest, ambitious, and sincere, and it is clear that The Killers want to reach the people in the cheap seats with something of value. That drives cynics nuts. If Wonderful Wonderful was about the inner journey, Imploding The Mirage conjures wide-open vistas, landscapes, and character sketches (several reference Tara once again, no doubt,) with an invitation to find the freedom of leaving mirages behind. The band assembles an impressive list of guest stars, (Adam Granduciel of The War On Drugs, Lindsey Buckingham, k.d. Lang, and indie darling Weyes Blood just to name a few,) and a deep bench of potential hits (easily two-thirds of this LP could be singles,) but there’s a level of unabashed spiritual depth to be found here as well. This is an album for the moment this world is currently experiencing. It shimmers in all the right ways, but the underlying ideas it suggests are good and true. Critics and cynics aside, that sound you just heard was a ball flying over the bleachers.

 

Though they have shifted personnel from time to time, usually for personal or health reasons, Brandon Flowers, Dave Keuning, Mark Stoermer, and Ronnie Vannucci Jr. kept pressing into new territory instead of retreading their hits. This time around, Flowers and drummer Vannucci were the only original members fully engaged in the writing and production process. With Shawn Everett and Jonathan Rado tapped as producers, the duo is known as indie rock favorites for their work with artists like The War On Drugs, Alabama Shakes, Father John Misty, and Kacey Musgraves; it would seem maybe this would be time for The Killers to take a hard left turn. Nope. Everett and Rado prove that they know how to make smart-sounding epic pop as well as just about anyone. A close listen reveals excellent old-school layering techniques coupled with a modern ear for clarity and precision. Elements of The Cars, New Order, Springsteen, U2 and Petty are given fresh life here.

 

The album opens with the line, “I tried going against my own soul’s warning, but in the end, something just didn’t feel right / Oh I tried diving even though the sky was storming / I just wanted to get back to where you are.” Thus begins an album that is so blatantly Gospel haunted and spiritually inspired, it would only make sense for Christian radio stations to start adding these songs right away. If they wanted to connect with real-world listeners, that is. The same song continues. “If you could see through the banner of the sun / Into eternity’s eyes / Like a vision reaching down to you / would you turn away? / What if it knew you by your name? What kind of words would cut / Through the clutter of the whirlwind these days?”

 

Dang!

 

And the music is so relentlessly hopeful and inviting it almost dares you not to sing along. It blends Springsteen’s most accessible, Born In The USA era swagger, with heaps more synths and sparkle. Flowers’ voice is strong but not perfect. It has just enough personality to be compelling, but boy, can he hit the rafters. There’s no small amount of U2 in the DNA here, but without the dotted 8^th notes and delay. There’s no Edge and no Larry, but the attitude is similar.

 

The Prodigal motif stays strong throughout the set. By looking at Tara’s story, “Blowback” and “Caution” offer compassionate slice-of-life character sketches of pilgrims in various stages of either running or returning. “My God” makes no mystery about it all. “Mirage after mirage / Crawling back to your arms / Stay stay / From your mouth to my heart.” The album’s first single, “Fire In Bone,” is practically a scene for scene retelling of the Prodigal Son story. “When The Dreams Run Dry” contemplates mortality and divinity.

 

The spirit of Jackson Browne’s 80’s era hits is alive in “Running Toward A Place.” The song starts with a prayer. “Give me eyes that I may see, the good in my people and the trouble in me.” It’s interesting that this, one of the most specifically spiritual songs, seems to equate deliverance with physical love. With the knowledge of the Flowers’ painful journey to stay together, and even to stay alive, through Tara’s C-PTSD (Brandon had to cancel a tour at one point due to her suicidal state,) the suggestion that something eternal can be found in covenantal intimacy gains import. In one verse, Flowers sings, “Give me the hands that I may lift / the weight of another who’s starting to drift.” Later in the same song, he sings, “Because we’re running towards a place / Where we’ll walk as one / And the sadness of this life / Will be overcome / If I lay with you in love / Will you meet me there? And shake the lightning from the locks / Of your unbound hair.”

 

The album closes with the title track, a ridiculously hooky, over-the-top pop-rock extravaganza that unabashedly promotes faith. From the choppy piano part channeling Springsteen, to the choir-like backing vocals, to the sheer audacity of suggesting that what we all might need right now is the courage to detonate some idols and claim some new territory, this is just crazy talk. If there is such a thing as a stadium tour for this album, I sure hope Flowers finds a way to walk on water as he sings this song to close the set.

 

The faith background and vernacular of the Nevada band is well documented. They grew up in the Mormon tradition (as did everyone around them.) It’s impressive to hear them presenting Gospel ideas so artfully and intentionally in music so clearly designed for widespread commercial success. Having grown up in the shadow of Sin City, it’s also impressive to see how well they connect their music to their own location (The Mirage Casino, for instance) and their own story, yet make that exotic locale relevant to everyone.  The message, about the importance of identifying false gods and illusions, as well as the mistakes, sins, and shadows that get us stuck in our own self-made traps, and imploding it all so that we can be free to become what we were meant to be, well, that’s pretty inspiring. In a year like this, Imploding The Mirage is exactly the kind of album we need.