PAYIN' THE COST:

Born to restyle (ALEXANDRA GILL, 10/19/06, Globe and Mail

Last time we checked their look in the mirror, when the Killers were riding high on Hot Fuss (their debut album, which shot out of nowhere to sell five million copies worldwide), they were wearing eyeliner, channelling the Cures with glittery new-wave pop tempos and being touted as the best British band this side of the Atlantic.

For Sam's Town, the band's highly anticipated follow-up — which made its debut at No. 1 on the Canadian Nielsen Soundscan chart last week — the group has grown handlebar mustaches, metaphorically jumped behind the wheel of a Chevy, cranked up the bass and reinvented itself as an all-American, anthem-sized rock ‘n' roll guitar band.

To almost anyone who will listen, Flowers has been gushing praise for Bruce Springsteen, explaining how his new-found appreciation for Born in the USA played a major part in the metamorphosis.

He also boasted to the British music weekly NME that Sam's Town was “one of the best albums of the past 20 years.”

This startling self-confidence, combined with the immodest references to rock's biggest icons (Flowers has also referenced U2, Oasis and Queen), unleashed a critical hammering. Rolling Stone's Rob Sheffield said the Killers “leave no pompous arena cliché untweaked”; Entertainment Weekly's Jody Rosen said the album plays like “a parody of rock bombast”; and in The New York Times, Sia Michel called it “a classic case of a young band overreaching to assert its significance.”

Flowers is unrepentant.

“I'm not ashamed of how much I love [Springsteen],” the 25-year-old singer says backstage before the Vancouver concert.

Hot Fuss was terrific, but you can't blame them for tiring of being The Cure--the makeup and hairstyling alone must take hours a day.

Posted by Orrin Judd at October 24, 2006 9:45 AM