Oh Jesus what happened to The Killers and when did the twang heat up to that level?
The new song “Miss Atomic Bomb”, is horrible. I understand its a amateur youtube video with 'WOOOOOOOOOO' girls in full attendance but Brandon Flowers sounds so bad its unbearable.
I cant take the music to seriously, again based on cell phone quality it would be unfair but there is absolutely no enthusiasm from anyone but the annoying broad screaming through it. I feel certain that she screams at just about everything like that- its a well seasoned 'woo' for sure.
I was excited. I had a huge love for The Killers an found their lyrics to paint lovely pictures. But the high pitched warble vocals are more annoying then contagious. Is this the end of the band? Is this a swan song LP?
Here is what I hope- that this shit Youtube video in no way represents the upcoming album, 'Battle Born'. I am hopeful the bass player actually shows up and does his job cuz there is God awful no beat in this tune. I hope that their live shows gain some energy cuz this thing was bad bad bad. To fire off new songs with such sluggishness makes me think they aren't so stoked about it either.
We shall see.. but heres your taste.
“Brandon Flowers sounds so bad it[']s unbearable? Flowers is known for singing in a fairly high range, even at the beginning of The Killers and Hot Fuss with songs like “Somebody Told Me” and “Midnight Show.” If you need further proof there is the extremely high vocal range of “Spaceman” where Flowers goes up to a high A in the early and late measures of the songs as well as each of the choruses. So if it’s his timbre and high range that is bothering you, it would be unreasonable of you to call him out for this as if it’s something new he’s suddenly doing.
While I wouldn’t dream of saying Flowers hits every single one of his notes in live performances, he certainly isn’t a terrible singer. Anyone with a reasonable amount of vocal training would be able to notice a huge difference in the quality of his live singing from Hot Fuss to their current status. Even in the middle of performing new songs on shows or tours Flowers will modify vowels to hit his pitches more efficiently. If you’d like an example of that then you can look up the Jools Holland version of Spaceman live versus the Royal Albert Hall performance, notice how he opens up the “a” vowel on name in “calling me by my name.”
For you to say his “warble vocals” are annoying would be a valid opinion if you weren’t claiming to like The Killers before this song, because his vocals are virtually the same as before. Your vocal criticism is vague at best so I can only guess at what you didn’t like about the performance. Perhaps it was the end when Flowers was transitioning in and out of falsetto. This was shaky, but again it’s a live performance where the vocal folds get tired and while I wouldn’t say it was his best singing, to say it was terrible would be a reach. If you’re going to call something terrible you should really back it up with more specific technical details. If you don’t like his voice, that’s a subjective matter and that’s completely fine. However for you to say he now sounds terrible puts you in a more objective territory, and you would in fact be wrong. This is Brandon Flowers as he has always been. Not perfect, but certainly not terrible.
Oh and by the way, so what if this isn’t a bass driven song? The synth and drums carry the beat just fine.