THE KILLERS | LIVE REVIEW
Liberty Stadium, Swansea, Sat 23 June
I’ve been live reviewing for several years now. Over this time, I’ve been lucky to attend some very special gigs as a reviewer on both the larger and more intimate stage. I keep all these tickets, stubs and wristbands on a cork board in my room as mementos. Yet over this time, there’s been one large, empty space on my board, keept free for the band I credit with introducing me to the hair-raising joys of chanting along to the catchy bridge of an indie-rock song. The year was 2004 and the band was The Killers, a Nevada group with a timeless debut album Hot Fuss; indie had never been so wonderfully, annoyingly catchy and exhilarating.
Fourteen years later I was finally given the opportunity to see them live as a reviewer. Brandon Flowers charged onto the Swansea stage announcing, “We are The Killers and that makes YOU the victims.” If by this he meant they were going to spend the next two hours assaulting us with entertainment and emotions, never was a more truer statement made.
Opening with a hat-trick of hits – The Man, Somebody Told Me and Spaceman – the 20,000-plus crowd were under Flowers’ spell, bouncing in unison as if anything outside the stadium at this moment in time didn’t exist. This was our own little planet for the next few hours – that very rare sense us busy little modern human beings get when you’re in the present moment and there is no other moment.
The most homely portion of the night came when the band covered Dire Straits’ Romeo And Juliet, followed by Flowers spotting a young girl in the audience waving a sign asking if she could play piano with him. Ellie [below], as we were introduced to her, was whisked up on to stage by security; Brandon put his arm around her, pointed to us and said “we’re all rooting for you,” and we really were. A Glastonbury-esque summer of love feel took hold as we watched Ellie’s pure awe of the frontman while she kept up with the band’s rendition of Dustland Fairytale.
The usual mid-set lull you can get at gigs of this size never happened. Throughout we were constantly kept on our toes, teased with bars from hits which they didn’t play until we showed them how bad we wanted it. A perfect example: the transition into hit Runaway by an chant of the line “we can’t wait ‘til tomorrow”, which we were made to sing over and over and over again. During this time, Flowers had done a quick costume change from his usual black ensemble to a canary yellow rhinestone-encrusted suit, channelling his hero as he thanked Elvis for introducing him to rock’n’roll.
Then we were called to order: it was time for us to become soldiers and we knew what this meant even before the intro to All These Things That I’ve Done. This was the moment we were waiting for – arguably the most famous bridge in any post-millennial indie song, and one for the crowd to sing with its iconic “I’ve got soul but I’m not a soldier” line. Getting louder and louder, higher and higher and foolishly trying to mimic Flowers’ spine-tingling falsetto without sounding like a bag of cats… and just as we almost made it, BOOM an explosion of string confetti was launched. That feeling of “oh please don’t let this be over, not yet” palpably filtered through the crowd.
We settled down for a moment before demanding our encore, and unsurprisingly the night came to a finish with Mr Brightside and Human. It was predictable, but it was what we wanted. The most intimate stadium gig I’ve ever had the pleasure of attending. I’m stepping away from music writing for a while, for health reasons, but have gone out on the highest of highs.
words DENIECE CUSACK photos ROB LOUD