ALBUM REVIEW: Brandon Flowers – ‘Thrasher’

You know how there’s that joke that the Red Hot Chili Peppers always write songs about California? Well, maybe we should start saying it about Brandon Flowers too, with how many songs by The Killers fit the narrative of ‘a girl in a small town / the desert with big dreams’. Caution; Runaways; Read My Mind; A Dustland Fairytale; Joy Ride; that’s probably not an exhaustive list. And sure enough, on Thrasher, it doesn’t take long to get to Tiger’s Blood for the tale to be retold again.

From a certain perspective, it can all be seen as a bit one-note, maybe even lazy. Post-Day & Age especially, The Killers’ entire brand was the biggest, broadest pieces of iconography that Americana and new wave could offer, often feeling rather repackaged. Flowers’ as an individual isn’t off the hook for that, either; remember his solo debut Flamingo in 2010 that was effectively another Killers album in sound? And yet, they’ve always had a magnetism to them, and on 2021’s Pressure Machine, the conscious effort to scale down and examine the grit the beneath the gloss was a distinctly new angle.

Thrasher, then, is both a natural next step, and something that wouldn’t be too out of the ordinary in the back of Flowers’ wheelhouse. As a pure country album, it’s his most distinct solo venture yet, where the minutiae imperative to Pressure Machine can feel exceptionally natural. At the same time, it’s largely made of big, broad vignettes that wouldn’t dash an assumption of ‘The Killers go country’. But it’s also really good at that. Just as The Killers’ intense know-how has let them sidestep the need for variety, Thrasher functions as an equally excellent branch of that.

For starters, Flowers has clearly spared no expense when it comes to getting this right. It was recorded in Nashville in RCA Studio A, birth place of many a classic of the genre. Involved is a litany of renowned musicians, most notably Charlie McCoy who played harmonica on Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde On Blonde. Clearly there’s pedigree here, buttressed by an authenticity rendered paramount. Maybe Flowers putting on his country twang for Does It Ever Cross Your Mind or Tiger’s Blood isn’t that, but it also doesn’t feel disrespectful, either. His voice already has a bit of a Roy Orbison quality in this context, so bridging the gap between that a ‘true’ country style isn’t a bad idea. Even if he’s still missing the levity to take a song like One Of Us to the next stratum, it’s a real knees-up, all the same.

Sonically, Thrasher winds up around a late-‘70s / ‘80s countrypolitan style, adjoined to some of the southern-rock of the same era. That’s about right, honestly; Flowers bears enough similarities to someone like John Mellencamp to where this makes sense. The adoration for classicism across the album takes a distinct shape, then. There are plenty of elegant strings and female backing vocals, be that to invoke the freewheeling frontiersman on Plans, or the swells of balladry on Angel and An American Dream. Similarly, there’s plenty of gloss and sheen to the honky-tonking opener Does It Ever Cross Your Mind?, which acts as a concentrated introduction to Flowers’ tastes on this part of the musical map.

It’s refreshing to see when a contemporary artist’s country pivot typically amounts to ‘pop with twang’. It’s indicative of a more seasoned taste, without neglecting the sheen that often makes The Killers so big and impactful. Red Ground, with its mariachi horns and spaghetti western vibe, is a near-perfect encapsulation of that ethos—dusty and earthen, but obviously showy. Conversely, the way those same sensibilities congeal on In A Heartbeat is too stodgy and off, and it’s the weakest song on the album for it. It’s the only true lowlight, to be fair; everywhere else, Thrasher operates on gung-ho commitment to being almost impossibly listenable.

What takes Thrasher fully over the top, though, is how, despite all else, Flowers is always at the wheel. Arguably more so than a normal Killers album; compared to this, you do see the edges tempered for mainstream friendliness. Far be it to call Thrasher ‘underground’ or anything, but it’s dripping with insanely specific details and imagery that simply wouldn’t belong in something more creatively democratic. It’s fittingly akin to an old country album in that way, right from the beginning with Does It Ever Cross Your Mind?’s assertion “I could’ve been born in Bangladesh / But I wasn’t, I was born here”. Admittedly, scenes can be overdrawn—see how Tiger’s Blood wants to plot near enough every sight and sound of its podunk setting—but with this, it’s better to go in too deep than seem dull and superficial.

Granted, there’s still a limit to even that. Tearjerkers can be a bit of grey area for Flowers, in that he knows the right things to do, but can’t help himself even then. Miss America stands out for that, a spacious, aching number from the point of view of Flowers’ sister where, in the same song as the line “Grown men have noticed me / Since I was 12 years old”, he feels the need to mention living near the car wash where Kevin Bacon and Chris Penn filmed Footloose. At best, it’s extraneous; at worst, it’s actively oxygen-thieving. There’s also Angel, about a Black baseball player who serves in the Navy and ultimately becomes involved in drug-smuggling, which opts to describe a mixed-race child as “chocolate and vanilla swirls”. (Minor tangent: it also wants to be a Dylan-esque story song so badly, particularly in a confluence of Hurricane and Tangled Up In Blue, but the chorus is too broad and submits the specificity of the writing elsewhere.)

Nevertheless, an album this overflowing with character takes moments like those in stride, as it should. Flowers nails the artistic persona he wants to embody on Thrasher, where even playing to his most well-worn strengths feels fresh and fun. Couple that with genuine heart and an instrumental ensemble that, here, feels second-to-none, and you’re left with a real gem, as rewarding on its first spin as its tenth. Clearly Flowers’ role of the whimsical heartland storyteller is continuing to reap untold rewards; it might even be getting better than ever.

For fans of: John Mellencamp, Tom Petty, Bruce Springsteen

‘Thrasher’ by Brandon Flowers is out now on Island Records.

Words by Luke Nuttall