‘Sam’s Town’: The Killers delivered an Americana album the 2000s needed
In the modern age, Americana almost doesn’t have a set style any more. It feels more like a catch-all term for music that’s from a bygone age when everyone played country music, but there’s a way for Americana to find its way into modern music.
So how did the most American album manage to come from The Killers?
Because for anyone not paying attention at the time, the entire band felt like they were designed to be your new favourite British band. Each of them was from Las Vegas, but there’s something about listening to an album like Hot Fuzz that made it feel right at home next to the biggest British acts of all time, like Duran Duran if they somehow stole the massive choruses that Noel Gallagher wrote.
But when coming off their blockbuster debut, Brandon Flowers didn’t want to repeat the whole thing over again. He wanted to rediscover why he loved making music like this in the first place, and as America was heading off to war in the aftermath of 9/11, Flowers found solace in listening to one of the true fathers of the country: Bruce Springsteen. The Rising had already put ‘The Boss’s music back on the radio, but something about the urgency of that music made Flowers rethink his whole process.
They could have gone ahead and made another ‘Mr Brightside’, but Sam’s Town was a different beast right from the album cover. Compared to everything else at the time, the stark black and white photos of the band on the back let everyone know they were in for something more thoughtful. Playing out like a musical stay at a Las Vegas hotel, the whole album feels like walking through different pieces of small-town America, and it’s not always the most flattering picture.
While ‘When You Were Young’ is in the conversation of the best Killers songs of all time, the other pieces of the album show Flowers inhabiting characters that aren’t always upstanding members of society. ‘Uncle Jonny’ is about a kid mulling over his uncle, who’s a cocaine addict, and ‘Bones’ is one of the most unsexy songs about sex ever written, to the point where Flowers even admits that he doesn’t really like the person he’s seeing.
But looking into the cornerstone tracks on the record, each song feels like a look into another pocket of America around the 2000s. And considering how much the country had faced since the terrorist attacks a few years prior, a lot of Flowers’s words reflect a lot of what people were experiencing. A line like “my heart, it don’t beat the way it used to” from ‘For Reasons Unknown’ might reflect a breakup, but everyone’s heart beats differently after seeing buildings crumble.
By the time this album came out, though, most people had chosen sides based on their political beliefs, and there was little wiggle room. It was abundantly clear that the Iraq War was a transparently flimsy idea, but whether it was people reacting with blind rage at the terrorists for what they had done or people like Green Day or System of a Down crying out against the establishment, The Killers were the perfect middle ground for people that just wanted to make sense of themselves.
Although Flowers doesn’t think for a second that America is perfect, he knows that there are still good parts of the country that are worth celebrating. Anyone could simply drape the flag around themselves, but by opening up the playing field and pulling from the records of days gone by, Sam’s Town is a clear pathway towards what the modern version of Americana music would be, whether that was the pitch-black tales of Ethel Cain or the most ethereal sounds of The War on Drugs.
Because like Springsteen before him, Flowers learned a long time ago about how to be both critical and compassionate at the exact same time. And in any era where the country can be in upheaval, Sam’s Town is a reminder that while America is far from the greatest country in the world and has more than its fair share of people who like to yell really loud about their own inner ugliness, it’s a country worth taking pride in and worth fighting for.
