Hi, we're the Killers and here is our song

The Killers have made an amazing career out of one (admittedly brilliant) trick - sounding a bit like New Order and Joy Division at exactly the same time!

Many thought their last album, Sam's Town, was a bit on the ponderous side. It aimed for the epic sweep of Bruce Springsteen's middle America anthems, but it was suffocated by its own ambition, wrapped in a woolly blanket of pretension and drowned in a black lagoon of muddy synths.

So for third album, Day and Night, the band sought out the talents of Stuart Price (whose nimble fingers once tweaked Madonna's knobs) and flicked the big red switch marked "pop".

Sadly, it hasn't worked. The record's first single, Human - which premiered on Zane Lowe's show on Monday - is a yawnsome retread of their earlier efforts.

It starts with that same, tired fuzzy synth sound, and a lyric that wants to be profoundly mystical but actually sounds like the daft ramblings of an agoraphobic nutjob ("sometimes I get nervous when I see an open door").

Things pick up when the chorus kicks in - with a thumping drum beat that suggests an awesome club remix is on the cards - but the melody is a bit of a dirge. Perhaps inadvertently, Brandon identifies the band's biggest problem - a desire to be important that outweighs their pop instinct. "Are we human, or are we dancers?" he wails.

Why can't we be both, Mr Flowers? Why can't we be both.

:: The Killers - Human (mp3)

Tweet