Doctor Blind
Danny's #1 : Hooray For Earth "No Love" [1 week at #1]
Posts: 3,530
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Post by Doctor Blind on Jul 22, 2006 7:16:34 GMT -5
That 'difficult second album' for one of the biggest new rock acts around. "Hot Fuss" was my #1 of 2004 despite buying it in DEcember of that year... so I am EAGERLY anticipating this of course.
It's out to buy on October 2nd! ;D
The album takes its name from a hotel-casino in Las Vegas, the hometown of the band. The first single from the album is When You Were Young released 18th September in the UK; the tracklisting has been confirmed by NME as:
Track Listing
'Sam's Town' 'Enterlude' 'When You Were Young' 'Bling' 'For Reasons Unknown' 'Read My Mind' 'Uncle Jonny' 'Bones' 'My List' 'This River Is Wild' 'Why Do I Keep Counting?' 'Exitlude'
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Post by M! on Jul 22, 2006 11:36:13 GMT -5
I guess "All The Pretty Faces" didn't make the cut. They played that one during their Toronto stop last year. I also wonder what ever happened to "Where Is She?".
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I Got Soul.
Mr. Brightside
All this work keeping people from having sex. Now I know how the catholic church feels. ZING!
Posts: 10,836
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Post by I Got Soul. on Jul 23, 2006 15:28:48 GMT -5
This is all glorious.
But whatever happened to "Where The White Boys Dance" The title alone had potential.
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I Got Soul.
Mr. Brightside
All this work keeping people from having sex. Now I know how the catholic church feels. ZING!
Posts: 10,836
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Post by I Got Soul. on Jul 25, 2006 18:07:18 GMT -5
Everything is shaping up fuss worthy.
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Post by M! on Jul 25, 2006 19:06:33 GMT -5
^I like it! Much better than that dreadful first album cover.
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Doctor Blind
Danny's #1 : Hooray For Earth "No Love" [1 week at #1]
Posts: 3,530
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Post by Doctor Blind on Jul 26, 2006 5:03:55 GMT -5
GREAT album cover!
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I Got Soul.
Mr. Brightside
All this work keeping people from having sex. Now I know how the catholic church feels. ZING!
Posts: 10,836
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Post by I Got Soul. on Jul 26, 2006 12:48:40 GMT -5
GAH!
The Killers Debut 'Sam's Town' In New York
July 25, 2006, 9:30 PM ET Jonathan Cohen, N.Y.
The Killers unveiled their sophomore Island Def Jam album, "Sam's Town," at a media gathering last night (July 24) in New York that drew label chairman Antonio "L.A." Reid and Def Jam head honcho Jay-Z. As previously reported, the follow-up to 2004's "Hot Fuss" will arrive Oct. 3; the single "When You Were Young" is at radio now.
The set doesn't stray far from the sound introduced on "Hot Fuss," with its throbbing bass lines, jagged guitar lines, vintage synth flourishes and singer Brandon Flowers' theatrical phrasing. Two potential singles, "For Reasons Unknown" and "Read My Mind," are close relatives to the propulsive pop of the band's breakthrough single, "Mr. Brightside."
Elsewhere, "Uncle Jonny" experiments with the dark, midtempo rock perfected by the Verve, while the influence of David Bowie and early Peter Gabriel hover above the dramatic "My List" and "Why Do I Keep Counting?" Two short piano-driven pieces, "Enterlude" and "Exitlude," find Flowers asking after the well-being of the listener: "Outside the sun is shining / seems like heaven ain't far away / It's good to have you with us / even if it's just for the day."
Material for "Sam's Town" was initially worked up during soundchecks, guitarist Dave Keuning told Billboard.com afterward. "We used to play about an hour extra in soundcheck and throw around ideas," he said. "Five or six songs made it out of that but another 10 or 12 were thrown away."
Keuning admitted there are "at least four great B-sides," including some tracks he "really wanted to make the album. They'll wind up on places like iTunes," he said.
The Killers will tour Europe in October and begin a North American jaunt in November. For the first time, the band will be augmented by an extra musician on stage, the Las Vegas-based multi-instrumentalist Ted Sablay. "He will be for us like Pat Smear was for Nirvana -- he'll play keys, guitar and sing a little bit. It will help us match the live versions a little closer to the album."
Here is the track list for "Sam's Town":
"Sam's Town" "Enterlude" "When You Were Young" "Bling" "For Reasons Unknown" "Read My Mind" "Uncle Jonny" "Bones" "My List" "This River Is Wild" "Why Do I Keep Counting?" "Exitlude"
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Post by M! on Jul 26, 2006 21:07:20 GMT -5
GAH INDEED!
GAHHHHHHHHHHHH!
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Sam I Am
Bend a car? Pat Ben-a-tar!
Posts: 2,211
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Post by Sam I Am on Jul 28, 2006 1:43:37 GMT -5
i think it's pretty clear that my town - err, i mean sam's town - has the best cover art of the year.
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Post by M! on Aug 8, 2006 17:20:15 GMT -5
But whatever happened to "Where The White Boys Dance" It looks like this is being offered as a bonus track if you purchase the album off iTunes.
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Doctor Blind
Danny's #1 : Hooray For Earth "No Love" [1 week at #1]
Posts: 3,530
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Post by Doctor Blind on Sept 2, 2006 6:32:02 GMT -5
Q magazine gave it 4 out of 5:
The men from Las Vegas hit the jackpot.
A steady procession of bands has, in the past year, faced the challenge of following up hugely successful debut albums. Keane and Razorlight appear to have breezed through, both having topped the UK album chart for two consecutive weeks upon the release of their second efforts. The jury's out on Scissor Sisters' "Ta-Dah" though it's lead-off single "I Don't Feel Like Dancin" suggests they can sleep easy. And then there's The Killers.
Their opening shot, 2004's "Hot Fuss" resides in some four million homes around the world. "Mr. Brightside", its standout song, has seemingly attained an inexhaustable ubiquity. "Sam's Town" has much to live up to and thus the pressure is very much on for the plucky Las Vegas quartet, particuarly since their frontman Brandon Flowers has already publically proclaimed it the best record of the past 20 years.
He's talking nonsense, of course, but then rock stars do. "Sam's Town" is, however, frequenty terrific and a much, much better record than its predeccessor.
Like the Scissor Sisters' self-titled offering, "Hot Fuss" was perfectly tailored for the iPod generation: one need keep but four songs from each, the rest could be disposed of without a second thought. "Sam's Town" doubles that number of attention-grabbing songs and, at a compact 12 tracks, also cuts down upon that ballast.
Like "Hot Fuss", it too is in thrall to '70s new wave, '80s indie, Pulp's "Different Class" and The Strokes "Is This It", but these are its starting points rather than its lock, stock and barrel. "Sam's Town" - titled after a casino established in the band's hometown by one Sam Boyd in the '70s - is The Killers' bid to add musical gravitas to their radio-friendly, unit shifting operation (hence, bootstrap ties and ill-advised facial hair - for some reason de rigueur for the American musician wanting to be taken seriously - have replaced the suits and kohl eyeliner of yore). Mostly, they've succeded.
Brandon Flowers has discovered Bruce Springsteen of late. It shows. First single "When You Were Young", with its pumping chorus and widescreen grandeur, is Springsteen's "Born To Run", albeit with The Boss's Cadillac pimped to ride. Flowers even sings - shamelessly - of "burning down the highway". It is fabulous. Ditto "Read My Mind", a song as evocative as the open road.
The album's other driving rocker, "This River Is Wild", pulls a similar trick by way of "Jungleland", "Born To Run" 's epic-to-end-all-epics, but with less pinache, Saddled with a pancake-flat chorus, it could have been culled (like "All The Pretty Faces", previewed at Glastonbury last year and sensibly junked at the last minute).
The Springsteen influence is evident throughout. Notably in the album's key theme - central characters stand on some mythical main street, wide-eyed and restless, yearning to chase down the American dream - and it's scope. "Sam's Town", again like "Born To Run", sounds vast: a bombastic wall of sound, devoid of subtlety and proud of it.
Producers Alan Moulder and Flood seem to have been ushered into the studio, invited to press every button and twiddle every knob at their disposal, and to bring along a kitchen sink for the hell of it. From the opening swell of the title track to the preposterously, but splendidly, overblown "Why Do I Keep Counting?", they employ it, alongside strings, glockenspiel and massed ranks of choral voices, and in the process suggest how wonderful Depeche Mode, The Cure and The Smiths would have sounded had they collectively thrown themselves at the mercy of Meat Loaf's "Bat Out Of Hell" Svengali, Jim Steinman.
What Brandon Flowers is actually singing about is of little importance, since he could be reciting the Yellow Pages to this tumultuous a backdrop.
Of course, for any band wishing to work on such a scale, "doing a U2" is the other option, a fact that The Killers have heeded. "Bling" (rubbish title, canyon-sized song) rumbles like "Where The Streets Have No Name" after a chrome paint job, it's Higher and Higher coda perhaps the album's highest point.
Elsewhere, Flowers plumbs Bono's well-thumbed lyrical phrasebook, so here there are stars that blaze like diamonds and unspecified objects that shine like gold. Their sights are locked on Everyman, the roar of stadia filling their ears.
And so it goes for most of the rest - the short, ragtime piano-cloured pieces "Enterlude" (peversely, the second track) and "Exitlude" being affectations rather than tunes. No such troubles beset "My List", the sort of heaving ballad routinely found on John Hughes movie soundtracks, or "Uncle Johnny", where The Killers imagine how Killing Joke might have handled a disco-pop anthem. Or on "Bones", which finds an otherwise asexual Flowers asking "Don't you want to come with me?/Don't you want to feel my bones on your bones?"
Big and bold, daft and dazzling, "Sam's Town" is a joy.
Written by Paul Rees
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Post by M! on Sept 2, 2006 20:30:08 GMT -5
GAH!
I can't stand this any longer. I want this now. NOW!!!!
Thanks for the review, Danny. A good read!
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Post by beaston105 on Sept 2, 2006 21:01:23 GMT -5
^SAME! I'm anticipating this so much, I'm afraid I'll be dissapointed!
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on Sept 2, 2006 21:52:45 GMT -5
Looking forward to it! If "When you were young" is any indication of how good this album is, then I will be very pleased
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I Got Soul.
Mr. Brightside
All this work keeping people from having sex. Now I know how the catholic church feels. ZING!
Posts: 10,836
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Post by I Got Soul. on Sept 2, 2006 23:41:17 GMT -5
It's honestly getting to be too much. I need this, NOW!
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