(Island)Even a couple of bafflingly misguided social commentary songs can\u2019t detract from the joys of Flowers\u2019 classically full-throated commitment to the Nashville bit<\/p>\n
Here are three immutable facts about Brandon Richard Flowers: he was born just outside Las Vegas, Nevada. He is 45 years old. And he never does anything by halves. When he and his band the Killers debuted in the early 2000s, as disaffected New York cool was on the rise, he was writing scream-along choruses sung in his upper register. When the Killers were searching for a sound even bigger and grander than the euphoric Springsteen pastiche of 2006\u2019s Sam\u2019s Town, they didn\u2019t think twice before recruiting Stuart Price to produce the spangly 2008 disco-rock record Day & Age.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s how you get a record like Thrasher. Flowers\u2019 third solo album finds Vegas\u2019s chosen son decamping to Nashville for a full-throated exploration of country music \u2013 not subtle, trendy Americana, but rip-snorting, honky-tonking, Nudie suit-wearing country. In many ways, Thrasher is a stylistic follow-up to the Killers\u2019 maudlin 2021 Pressure Machine, which saw Flowers explore windswept balladry and tasteful story-songs. But that record was as forgettable as Thrasher is a hoot; Flowers wilts when he doesn\u2019t fully commit, as was the case on Pressure Machine, and he doesn\u2019t make that mistake here. Thrasher features many of Nashville\u2019s most revered country musicians, including pedal steel legend Bruce Bouton, 85-year-old harmonica player Charlie McCoy, Gillian Welch\u2019s musical partner Dave Rawlings and lauded Americana musician Margo Price.<\/p>\n
This deep bench doesn\u2019t obscure Flowers\u2019 oddball tendencies. On rollicking opener Does It Ever Cross Your Mind?, he writes like a man who\u2019s done his 10,000 hours absorbing pop music cliches and now feels equipped to write his own. \u201cI could\u2019ve been born in Bangladesh \/ But I wasn\u2019t, I was born here \/ With just enough jellybeans in my basket \/ To ask you to go a\u2019wishing on a star,\u201d he sings, injecting his nonsense with such gravitas and moxie that it\u2019s easy to believe that\u2019s something people say.<\/p>\n
Those weird turns of phrase invigorate Thrasher\u2019s many character studies. Tiger\u2019s Blood would be good-but-ordinary Springsteen pastiche, with its repeated refrain of \u201clike a runaway train\u201d, but Flowers makes this story of a \u201ccheerleader working the till [who] wants to get outta this podunk place\u201d his own with weird, specific images \u2013 of \u201cpeach-fuzz boys getting hard in the corner on Mortal Kombat\u201d and a \u201cswamp cooler leaking down the bricks outside\u201d. Especially great is all the idiosyncratic detail on closer An American Dream, its universal-sounding title concealing seemingly the most surreal song on Thrasher. As it builds, Flowers stacks evocative image upon evocative image: \u201cA Guinness World Record holder \/ For the longest fall living\u201d; \u201cElvis in a Tesla Model X\u201d; \u201clights that flicker on hubcap chrome.\u201d<\/p>\n
As on Pressure Machine, Flowers takes a couple of big swings, both of them misses. On Miss America, he writes from the perspective of a young woman in an abusive relationship. Although this is something of a pet topic for Flowers, he is not a particularly elegant writer; amid all the salacious euphemisms for abuse, he sings things like: \u201cTruth be told \/ Grown men have noticed me since I was 12 years old \/ It always made me feel like some kind of prize \/ I guess I saw my worth through their porno eyes.\u201d But even that feels graceful in comparison to Angel. There\u2019s no way to sugarcoat it: Angel is a song about a talented Black baseball player who starts dating a white girl. Angel and the girl have a daughter, and Angel is deployed to be in the navy, after which he abandons his wife and kid to become a drug smuggler. The song ends with Angel being pulled over by the cops and attempting to evade them on foot.<\/p>\n
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It\u2019s impossible to comprehend how Flowers thought this song was a good idea. When Angel and his girlfriend have their baby, he sings the lines \u201cChocolate and vanilla swirls \/ There\u2019s gonna be a little girl\u201d. Flowers supposedly wrote more than 30 songs for the record, meaning there were at least 20 alternatives. The place Flowers lands \u2013 \u201cIt don\u2019t matter how far you\u2019ve come \/ Or how well you ran the race \/ You\u2019re gonna have to come face to face \/ With that thing you\u2019ve always known to be true \/ That you buried inside of you\u201d \u2013 could be a critique of American racial hegemony, or it could be flat-out racist, implying that our fates are hardwired. I strongly suspect that it\u2019s an attempt at the former, but that it could feasibly be taken either way is an indictment in itself.<\/p>\n
Flowers has always had occasional bouts of foot-in-mouth \u2013 this simply feels like a particularly bad one. A big part of Angel\u2019s failure is that it is one of the few genuinely dull songs on the album \u2013 plodding and dirgey, with an attempt at a pathos-drenched chorus that has little of the spark or fleet-footedness of the rest of the album. Although it lacks the attention-grabbing singles of 2015\u2019s The Desired Effect, Flowers\u2019 last solo record, Thrasher is front-to-back a far stronger, more enjoyable album that could even win over fans who haven\u2019t tapped in since Mr Brightside. The westernwear suits him.<\/p>\n