Recently I had the pleasure of attending a music festival in Spain where The Killers were one of the headliners. Top-billed along with Metallica, Muse, Florence & the Machine, and Jack White, they were by far the highlight of the 5-day affair, their set becoming a joyous singalong among tens of thousands of fans. I’ll admit to being a bit concerned about the contrasting fanbases. Is Chase Center even able to become the joyous sing-along venue?
Johnny Marr, most famously of The Smiths, opened the show. So far, every one of his opening sets has been exactly the same eight songs played in the same order. He opened with the same three: “Armatopia,” “Panic” and “Night and Day” before something broke on the stage while preparing for the next number, “Spirit Power and Soul.” Johnny asked if they should fix it or play a different song and then apologized for the delay. He told us it would be worth it. Meanwhile, some fan on the floor lost his voice yelling for “THIS CHARMING MAN!” which Mr. Marr promised would be coming. (A quick look at his prior setlists reveals this was to be song five.)
But after a frustrating wait and a good rendition of the first single from his newest album, he asked his band to skip ahead to the Electronic song, “Getting Away With It.” And after 15 seconds of that, he told his band to stop. “Let’s just do “How Soon Is Now” and get out of here.” Sure, that’s an all-time classic that everyone loves, and not everyone studies setlist.fm to prepare for shows, but the shouting man never got his charming man, and to me, that seems a little sad.
Now we had 45 minutes between sets instead of 30 minutes, so I’ll share something about Chase Center: They have something called the United Club, which leads to some of the seats. For basketball games, this area is well guarded, but for concerts, you can get to the club area without issue. If you decide you want to drink soda, go there because they have these alternative soda flavors like Agave Vanilla Cream and Pineapple Cream. No need to drink standard flavors for your $8!
OK, time for the show to start, and The Killers really know how to start a show! One question that always needs to be answered is, “Will Dave be here tonight?” So when Dave Keuning, the original guitarist who doesn’t always tour with the band, walks out on stage, there’s a huge cheer from the curious fans. Finally, Brandon Flowers, rock star, walks out to exploding confetti cannons to sing “My Own Soul’s Warning” from 2020’s Imploding the Mirage. (This is technically the tour for that album. Even though there’s a newer album, Pressure Machine, this newest record will be practically ignored in the setlist.) And we’re off!
I met someone in Spain who told me that he had come for one day from another country just to see The Killers. “I’ve just been having a bad time recently, and I needed Brandon Flowers’s positivity to turn things around for me.” That’s a lot to put on a rock star, but Brandon definitely pulls it off. He has a little speech he’s been giving this year. He comments on how isolating COVID is and continues, “ain’t no one isolating in here” before continuing on about how this is a “super spreader event … we’re spreading peace! We’re spreading love! We’re spreading rock and roll!” All this before launching into “Jenny Was a Friend of Mine” to massive cheers. Witnessing Brandon Flowers in 2022 as a global rock icon feels so far removed from the time he took my cell phone to talk to my then girlfriend because she was too sick to go to their Virgin Records instore in San Francisco. (Somewhere, she has an autographed copy of the CD of Hot Fuss.)
That same night, I went to see the band again at Popscene at 330 Ritch. Little did I know that I had been rubbing shoulders with the band at the same club the previous year! Brandon took some time to talk about their time in Berkeley recording their debut album and how he and the band would head to Popscene to dance after recording. A quick look at the calendar says this would have been in 2003, and I definitely would have been there at the same time! He also talked about he had Thai food for the first time in Berkeley. Did we eat at Thai Temple together?
The middle of the show was mostly reserved for some of the newer material, including the newest song, “Boy,” the synthesizer hook of which bears more than a passing resemblance to Erasure’s “A Little Respect.” Of course how can you have a bouncing synth line without referring back to Vince Clarke? It’s nice that even as The Killers music glides more firmly into the American rock and roll sounds of Springsteen, their British influences can still shine through.
The closing kick of the show was started off by “Runaways,” a song that both feels like a lost Springsteen song and a prototypical Killers song. It’s more popular than I expected, and is followed by “Read My Mind,” a song that hides a soaring, charging pre-chorus inside of it’s contemplative quietness. Who gets tired of singing “I don’t shine if you don’t shine” at the top of their lungs?
Soon, we’d have an attempt at a joyous singalong of “I got soul but I’m not a soldier” to close out the main set with “All These Things That I’ve Done.” I think the answer as to whether or not The Chase Center can truly host a joyous singalong is still an open one. The seating is very spread out and the ceilings too high to really feel the crowd working together to create a moment for everyone. This crowd surely tried. A few choice people in the front row were screaming every word of the show with glee, but it never quite reverberated through the building.
Finally, we were treated to an encore that started with “Spaceman” before bringing Johnny Marr back on stage to play “Stop Me If You Think You’ve Heard This One Before” by The Smiths and concluding with their new version of “Mr. Brightside” that starts off with synthesizers and a mainly chanted verse and chorus. (The fans refer to this as the 50/50 version and is featured on their rarities compilation Sawdust.) This part of the song falls flat, with the crowd around me mainly sitting around wondering what’s happening before the famous guitar line kicks in (causing everyone to lose their shit) for the second verse which is now sung like original first verse. There is never a traditional second verse. Sure, the verses are the same but the change of inflection on “JUST FINE” that’s so pleasing in the original is lost. Listen, I know bands get tired of their most famous songs and want to change things up from time to time, but this is their moneymaker, the most popular song of the entire 2000s by any artist. This isn’t quite Slow Layla or Smooth Jazz Roxanne, but let’s play the standards the way everyone wants to hear them, especially those who are seeing you for the first time. It’s only three minutes of every night for the rest of your life, but it’s a big part of why you have this life. Drummer Ronnie Vanucci, Jr even walks out at the end of the show to thank the crowd for the amazing life they’ve given him. They know!
I don’t want you to walk away thinking this was a dealbreaker. This was a terrific show, part of the band’s best tour in years. The new material sounds excellent, the old material feels like a warm blanket, and Brandon Flowers has elevated himself to Global Rock Icon status and it’s amazing to see. I declared him the biggest “rock star” in the world under 50 and so far no one has been able to come up with a better answer. From the style to the performance to the speeches about togetherness, you really walk away from a show by The Killers feeling better about life than you did before you got there.
Thanks to The Killers personal photographer @robloud for the photos
