Review Summary: Hooks up the butt, lyrics that could top a cheese pizza and sell perfectly well, and undeniable charm and accessibility are all over this album.
I remember the first time I heard a Killers song. It was 2004 and I was eight years old, second grade. It was in the morning before school, and I was in my car, half-awake, when I heard "Somebody Told Me" for the first time, and it was that moment the first stone of my musical journey through time and space was set. That was the most definitive musical moment of my childhood, and whenever I hear "Somebody Told Me" again after that, I'm taken back to a way less convoluted time in my life where enjoying music was the easiest thing in the world.
So here I am years later, reminiscing the past and reflecting on the debut album of my absolute favorite band of all time, whose music forever changed my perception of what good music was and what bad music is.
This is the album that got me into the Killers. This is the album that started me taking music seriously. This is the single greatest album I have ever heard. No contest. I love this album dearly.
Anyway, as an opening track you're greeted to the song "Jenny Was A Friend Of Mine" which opens with a synth wizzle and shifts into a series of vicious distorted downstrokes, which introduces the bass, then the entire song; a lover's lament to the murder of his love, narrated by Jarvis Cocker put twenty years into the future and raised in America. Apparently this song is part of a "murder trilogy" which despite the cheese and lameness of concept, actually works. If you listen to these three songs you can actually scavenge a plot involving murder in there. Which just goes to show how much of a good lyricist Brandon Flowers is, mixing metaphor with straight facts and progression, on stage he seems like a storyteller of sorts, writhing and seizing up and about the stage listlessly.
Certain songs shine above the rest; such as the ending track; "Everything Will Be Alright" which is an atmospheric coax to a worried lover, driven by a static drum beat and thick with clouds of reverb and synths. It is also for a Killers song; as it includes a solo. There's also "Midnight Show" which is centric on the basis of going faster and faster, and back flawlessly and seamlessly, just like the emotional rush of the story of murder the lyrics are centered on. Each and every track on Hot Fuss have their own unique appeal, and somehow are simultaneously similar in terms of style.
And what is this "style" you may ask? Probably Pulp put in Las Vegas and forced to write songs infusing lasers, neon, faux Britishism and cheese. But that absolutely does not detract from the album's quality. Despite the characteristic flaws it possesses it is still a gem, a great gem. A gem shimmering with the benefits of high quality studio mixing, orgasmic rhythm sections and ear-candy melodies, and the cons of too much neon lights converted into sound. What this album does, is turn strobe lights into sound, personify the enigma of Las Vegas and smother it in a blanket of shadows and fairies, and unveil it for all the world to see its wonder and beauty.
Nevertheless, this is a wonderful album that hooks you in with it's overabundance of synth hooks, leads and Jarvis Cocker, and keeps you with its stories and whimsy characteristic of Las Vegas.
