dot_fennel | [music] THE KILLERS

Combines most of the Strokes' good points with many of Interpol's, plus some of Blur's old flaws for flavor. Did we even know the Strokes had good points? Seriously.

In high school I wondered at how such good music could be popular in England. With Monty Python and Douglas Adams already old favorites I was prepared to believe the British had superior taste or, even weirder, that they were a nation of alienated half-geeks. (The Killers are from Las Vegas, but this is Britpop -- so solidly Britpop, and so inconsistently any one other thing, that the right gloss is "posers" but not "dilettantes".)

Lyrical vapidity aside, The Killers show just how mainstream a wide variety of post-punk quirks have become. Those occasional synths aren't a retro thing, they're just textural; the habit of drawing out a vowel just so has passed through dozens of hands since Johnny Rotten and Richard Butler first had at it, yet it still gets me. The really dated parts are 10 years old, not 20: "Somebody Told Me" couldn't have aped "Girls & Boys" harder without the appearance of self-awareness. And self-awareness is not something the Killers share with any of the bands they remind me of.

It may matter in the long run that as human creations these songs are shallow. But to my surprise, I liked this more the second time I listened to it, not less.

Footnote: Even though singer Brendan Flowers is the only person credited on all songs -- the other band members co-write equally, but not all at once -- two of the three songs he takes a solo credit for are the record's two really forgettable moments. Suspicious.