TWO years ago, Brandon Flowers lead a different band into a very different London stage.
This was The Killers' show at Wembley Stadium, which was the Las Vegas band's biggest headline outing, and they celebrated with a greatest hits parade, fireworks, confetti, lasers, lighters-up singalongs, a song honouring the venue and the legends that had played it... basically, the full works.
But with The Killers on a break, Flowers is now back to his side-project. While he has hinted he would've preferred new solo album The Desired Effect to be a full Killers project, the neat little electro-pop compositions are instead a solo one, and with it, he is on tour with his solo band, which brings him back to Brixton Academy.
The last time The Killers did a full show in one of London's most famous music rooms was on the tour for Sam's Town, although its safe to say that Flowers need no time to reacquaint himself with the venue. He and his impressively proficient solo band put the pedal to the metal immediately, hammering off a brass-powered Dreams Come True and a nice and spindly Can't Deny My Love as a show-starter.
This opening pair gets a healthy reaction, but the biggest early reaction comes for Crossfire. The lead single from 2010's Flamingo inspires a large singalong and stompalong from the assembled hordes.
Flowers has always had the air of being surprised and delighted with people singing along, and that thrill looks in place. He grins his way through the opening tracks, while jumping on and off his monitors and pumping fists in a show of physicality, all without seemingly getting sweat on his silver foil jacket.
Indeed, in the opening stages, the only real break is an extended intro discussing the origins of Magdalena, which is a substantially improved beast live.
There's also a large singalong for the first real slow track, which sees a reworked country-style version of Hot Fuss opener Jenny was a Friend of Mine, which is all acoustic guitars and brush stroke drums alongside the track's signature bass riff.
This segues nicely into some more newer singalong tracks. The stalker-stylings of Lonely Town get perhaps the best reaction of the new stuff played, and plenty of bopping along to its stylings. Following on from that, recent single I Can Change gets people moving to its electro-stomp grooves, despite getting an initially quite muted reaction. Flowers even ends the track with a vocal snippet of Bronski Beat's Smalltown Boy to accompany the sampled original.
The biggest singalong of the night is played onto a slide-guitar heavy rendition of Killers favourite Read My Mind, before the main set ends with a rapturously received pairing of Only the Young and a lively rendition of the Thin White Duke remix of Mr. Brightside. The latter duo in particular is an impressive and unbroken hotstreak, with the spindly former cascading seamlessly into the grooves of the latter, even if producer Stuart Price doesn't guest on the pair like he did in 2010.
A guest star is coming, however, as Pretenders lead singer Chrissie Hynde is introduced to a very good reception. The two leads then take part in a good rendition of the Pretenders first single Don't Get Me Wrong, while Flowers and Hynde do some dancing together at the front of the stage.
Hynde's pipes are certainly impressive in full-flow, which is also demonstrated as the duo then duet on Desired Effect track Between Me and You.
Two more new cuts then round off the evening. The chirpy Still Want You is first, which is dedicated to Flowers' wife, who is introduced to the crowd before it - perhaps a first at anything related to Flowers - before about 4/5 extra renditions of the chorus extend it, each one more fervently sung to then the last.
If there's only real one misstep, the downbeat The Way It's Always Been feels like an odd choice to close the show. That's not to say its not performed well - like everything else, the band of multi-instrumentalists, backing singers, brass players and a lively drummer hidden by a myriad of gear perform it very well, and Flowers' pipes top it off in style. But its not exactly the most anthemic closing tune, and feels oddly placed. In truth, the show could also have gone on for longer, not least given the headline act started over half an hour late.
This, however, is a relatively minor quibble. For the show itself is a delightful proposition filled with plenty of impressive moments.
Whether or not Flowers on his own might reach similar heights as his day job band is a different debate, but in this space and time, its fairly clear that on his own, he's having a good go at it, and that its definitely a proposition making sense live.
4/5
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