April showers bring Brandon Flowers…
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[7.50]
Edward Okulicz: “Can’t Deny My Love” gets one thing right that many songs of its ilk get wrong; it actually makes its singer sound like his love might be worth having a go. Flowers’ earnestness somehow allows him to sidestep being a douche, and his sense of the desperate and theatric couldn’t be put to better use than this. It’s more or less the sequel “Hungry Like the Wolf” has needed for 30 years, and while it leans on some 80s musical punchlines (orchestra hit! twice!) it’s got more going for it than musical gravedigging. Choruses don’t come bigger or more dramatic than this one, or at least they don’t need to.
[10]
Anthony Easton: Brandon Flowers’ effusive, melodramatic, obsessive voice, open as the highway between Vegas and Los Angeles, is one of rock’s great gifts. This reaches those levels (the spoils of your mercy/the reverence of your bed, especially). But it pushes too hard a bit, and some of its excesses do not add to his work. I am excited about the next album, though.
[8]
Alfred Soto: He’s so ridiculous and committed to a particular kind of excess that I can never count him out. Orchestral synth stabs that he can bring home to Trevor Horn, Nile Rodgers-worthy slick licks, bongos, twaddle about hillsides and meadows. For the first time since 2008 his vocal holds it together. Whaddya know — it may join “Human” and “When You Were Young” as Soto Karaoke Standards.
[7]
Micha Cavaseno: Kinda interesting that he’s gone from aping New Order to aping Wang Chung and Peter Gabriel. Gonna be really interesting though if he has a lot of success with that.
[4]
Scott Mildenhall: Just as Brandon Flowers’ first, unfulfilled stab at a solo career began, his second has a man’s evaluation of defeat turned cinematic. The difference is that while “Crossfire” stared it in the face with a wistful sorrow, “Can’t Deny My Love” snarls at the thought of it. Flowers is fevered, running around rampageously, stealing Trevor Horn’s orchestra hits and bringing harbinger harmonies, unerring and unable to be reasoned or reckoned with. It’s vast, vainglorious and vaguely Biblical. It’s preposterous.
[8]
Thomas Inskeep: When did the guy from the Killers morph into Enrique Iglesias and start making circa-1985 Fairlight-orchestra-stab-filled disco? OH, when he invited Ariel Rechtshaid to produce this Haim-meets-“Domino Dancing” single. This is perversely awesome, like a modern-day Lewis Martineé record, and I like it more the more I play it. Better than pretty much anything in the Killers’ discography, too.
[9]
Brad Shoup: Relentless, man. Relentless Fairlight orchestra hits, the whiffing stabs of a horror-movie baddie who knows you’ll tire eventually. Before that, there’s kicks to be had, sure. Like when he says “have we learned, or are we…” and suddenly I’m everybody else in a Louie sketch. Anyway, all apologies to Mike Shinoda, but I’m still stoked for Haimcore, because it acknowledges that many of us drive cars with stereos in them.
[6]
Will Adams: Ariel Rechtstaid has a knack for injecting drama into his productions. It begins with the booming drums and pitch-wavering synth pads, but the songwriting, too. I’ve always preferred Flowers in pop mode, and the chorus here — “NOT gonna, NOT gonna deNYYY” — is the kind of hook that’s, well, undeniable.
[8]