SINGLE: The Killers - Read My Mind

I'll start the article like this: Sam's Town is crap. And I'll continue like this: it's crap apart from two songs, and Read My Mind is one of them. I'm stumped at how the band enthusiastically states Sam's Town is 'the best record they could make', when their previous LP Hot Fuss seems to fill that claim's shoes snugly. Where did it all go wrong? What musical decision chose this path? Where did Brandon Flower's 'tache pop up from? So many questions, so many bad songs. Kudos for trying something a little new in the studio, but when the result is an almost unlistenable mash-up of keyboards and guitars: NO. On a lighter note, here's the single review...

Third single from the Las Vegas quartet's second album, it's a dance tune rolled into a ballad and a bloody good one at that. When the 80's synths hum into the fray, it sounds ok. When Brandon Flower's vocals make an appearance, things sound less ok. After the initial lull with the first part of the verse, a rather beautiful guitar and keyboard arpeggio arrives and make things sound so much better - the chorus of 'I / don't / mind' really does sound glorious, pushing the track gracefully into the stratosphere of the listener's endorphin levels (well, at least mine). A headrush of memories, good and bad; a yearning for something already past; both appropriate descriptions of the kind of music that's usually the most touching, and there is a heartful of it here. Bridge time: there is a decent enough solo - the tone of the guitar could have suited the song a bit more. A wonderful falsetto note of Flower's in the final few bars which completes the song's super-reflective mood well. The entire composition is a contemporary Human League hit, albeit less camp. Nah, strike that.

A brief history of the tracks chosen for radio so far from Sam's Town: When You Were Young - excellent. Bones - ruuuuuuuuubish. And this - excellent, again. A message to The Killers - recapture your muse again; it sounds clearly present on two tracks here. That muse should be two words: 'hot', and 'fuss'.
I'll finish the article like this: I'm warming to his moustache.
Overall - 8.5/10
Get it? - yeppety