Bruce Springsteenian Romanticism is exemplified via “Born to Run”. The conflict between yearning and earthly circumstances is palpably evoked. The “town [that] rips the bones from your back” symbolizes family, DNA, conditioning, and emo-cognitive wiring. The impulse to “run” points to the craving to transcend who we are and where we live: the life we were born into. With so much of Springsteen’s work, we encounter that fundamental tension between what the Greeks called fate and the longing for unadulterated freedom.
Certainly this theme and Springsteen’s songcraft have influenced numerous artists, including Brandon Flowers, the principal songwriter and vocalist for the Killers. Both 2006’s Sam’s Town and 2021’s Pressure Machine feature narratives about small-town life, with characters struggling through day-to-day routines, addiction, and crime while fantasizing about grander experiences.
Flowers‘ two solo albums—the rootsy Flamingo (2010) and glitzy The Desired Effect (2015)—don’t deal directly with small towns or the specific propulsion to escape those environments. They do, however, touch on the challenges related to shedding destructive habits and breaking with the past to pursue an envisioned future. As with Springsteen, solo Flowers explores what it’s like to ache for a different life while accepting, at times being resigned to, the way things are.
On his third solo album, THRASHER, Flowers again trucks in restlessness (along with the inspiration and frustration that comes with it). He revisits the Americana playbook, fully adopting country templates in a few tracks. At the same time, his production values are high, even glossy, which gives the project an overall pop or mainstream feel. Flowers’ songwriting skills are as evident as ever, his vocals multifaceted and distinct. The result is a set that contains some of his most alluring work to date.
Opener “Does It Ever Cross Your Mind?” quickly fuses Nashville and Las Vegas. Burnished guitars, crisp drums, and punchy bass conjure a cross between The Honky-Tonk Highway and The Hard Rock Hotel & Casino. Flowers’ voice brings to mind Jay Farrar if the Son Volt frontman attended the Hippocrates Institute for a month, emerging booze-free, smokeless, and vegan. Flowers offers an accessible and hooky take on the randomness of birth (“I could’ve been born in Bangladesh / But I wasn’t, I was born here”) while reminding us that we’re connected to the stars (“This world is full of mystery / But somewhere from the secret we descend”).
The uber-trebly “Tiger’s Blood” depicts a “cheerleader”, “peach fuzz boys”, and Flowers’ old self, all of whom want to leave behind “this podunk place”. Springsteen’s The River comes to mind. Traces of Tom Petty‘s early work float in the mix, as do lyrical and tonal debts to John Mellencamp’s 1980s run. The chorus is a well-engineered wash of pedal-steel glissandos, electric-guitar runs, and spry, almost brittle, drums. Flowers’ voice soars, appropriate for the club and stadium alike.
“Plans”, THRASHER’s melodic centerpiece, brims with string sounds and clean back-up vocals that conjure TV dinners and black-and-white sitcoms. Our lives don’t necessarily unfold according to our to-do lists, Flowers observes. His voice, reminiscent of a countrypolitan Neil Diamond, transitions easily from the bassy to the higher-pitched, from the tongue-in-cheek to the melancholy.
With “Paradise”, Flowers channels a sincere yet satirical George Jones. His illustrations of “deferred dreams” and disappointments translate with immediacy and credibility. His diaristic yet poetic take on the father-son relationship, how it can be defined by anger as well as feelings of guilt and obligation, represents some of his best penmanship: “I cared for my old man right until the bell rang / He never really cared for me / He left us for another life / … Sounded like it might be paradise.”
The latter part of the album tilts in a solemn direction à la Pressure Machine. The tracks are more atmospherically complex, Brandon Flowers’ narratives leaning toward the tragic. The epistolary “Miss America” is written from the perspective of a woman who has left her speed-addicted husband and moved with their kids back to her parents’ house. There are allusions to violence, as well as a disturbing hint that the husband “did things to [his sister] a brother shouldn’t do”. Reverb and dryness are employed selectively, creating distance and presence as needed.
“The Red Ground” opens with marching-band horns and chamber-pop strings, before Flowers segues into a weightier testimony, reflecting how it’s pretty much impossible to recreate a previous experience or mindset. In other words, there’s no regaining Eden. If you actually rediscover it, it’ll be a different place. More likely, you’ll have to find a new version in a new location. “In a Heartbeat”, meanwhile, is a woozy blend of tremulous guitars and metronomic drums. Life passes quickly, and intentions get sidelined. Heartbreak seems inevitable. Wisdom is the consolation prize.
Closer “An American Dream” addresses our need to reconcile with the past, including how we were raised. Various words echo, facilitating a mirage-like effect. The song integrates psychedelic imagery (“women with blurred-out crotches and stars for nipples”), cultural reconfigurations (“Elvis in a Tesla Model X Jet-black ’68 comeback leather”), and a passage that underscores the importance of forgiveness (“I picked up the pay phone and dialed my parents / Only I had forgotten my mother had passed”). The chorus is built around a hook that would work well as a sing-along pub tune: “Gold and silvеr, God and glitter / Lights that flicker on hubcap chrome.”
Humans, despite being attached to what they want, are remarkably adaptive. This is our nature, an instinctive drive that speaks to design and/or the life force more than any personal virtue. THRASHER’s characters suffer, sometimes acutely, particularly on the album’s later tracks. That said, Brandon Flowers’ melodies are largely airy, ebullient, even life-affirming. Articulating the troubles we face, he also, and perhaps ultimately, pays homage to our resilience.