Welcome to Sam's Town

The whole point of a review is to express one's own opinion, so debating one is kind of pointless. As the old saying goes, there's no accounting for taste. But every once in awhile, I'm so incensed by a review that I feel compelled to respond with one of my own. And, well, this is one of those times.

Why, Rolling Stone? Why? Not that I'm particularly surprised, of course. There's a reason I've been shelling out eight bucks a pop for imported issues of Q for the last ten years. Rolling Stone jumped the print media equivalent of a shark ages ago. But still, I'm always a little surprised when a reviewer manages to pan an album with the barest of references to any actual music.

One of Rob Sheffield's complaints? "[T]his is the Killers in 1980s Springsteen mode" in "their quest to rewrite Born to Run." That Born to Run came out in 1975 is probably inconsequential. That the two albums sound nothing alike, however, is. What really boggles my mind, however, is that this would actually be considered a bad thing. Who else should a young, American rock bad strive to be like if not Bruce Springsteen? I can't imagine anything nicer than if the glut of sound-alike, scream-o, schlock bands with the oh-so-cleverly misspelled monickers that presently dominate American poprock picked up a copy of The River or Born to Run and took a few notes.

There is one track that has a very Springsteen feel to it, the brilliant "This River Is Wild," and it's one of the best tracks on the album. It doesn't so much sound like Springsteen as feel like him. The rhythm and cadence and earnestness and epic feel of the lyrics and vocals fills a familiar void. The Killers are not a clone of Springsteen, but they are a child of him, and that's a glorious thing.

Sheffield's review is all downhill from there, getting as petty as to berate the titling of the songs (judge a book by its cover much?), scientifically inaccurate lyrics (huh? tell it to Elton John's "Rocket Man"), and Brandon Flowers's choice to, gasp, try something different with his vocal stylings in Sheffield's singular reference to the actual sound of the album.

That last, yes, Flowers is no Frank Sinatra. But he doesn't pretend to be either. He sings with feeling instead of flawlessness, and that's okay, because the instrumentation on Sam's Town? Tremendously good. It's wall-of-sound rock and roll at it's best, epic and loud and impossible not to dance to. The Killers accomplish something in both of their albums that would seem to be a rarity these days: emotion without ballads. Not that there's anything wrong with a ballad, mind you. They just don't do them. Can you imagine the endless airplay they'd get if they came up with their version of Coldplay's "Yellow" or "The Scientist"? That sucker would play at weddings until the end of time. And yet The Killers keep their tempos fast, their rhythms complex, and rock straight through another fifty minute album.

Sam's Town might not have the singles... There's no "Mr. Brightside" here, but it's as good of an album as Hot Fuss, if not better. This is my favourite album so far this year, and I recommend it without reservation.

And you know what? I like a well-placed glockenspiel. So suck it, Rob Sheffield.