Review: The Killers at MEN Arena

Mar 10 2009 by Laurie Stocks-Moore, Chester Chronicle

THE KILLERS/MEN Arena, Manchester, March 9

REVIEW/by LAURIE STOCKS-MOORE

BRANDON Flowers’ short wiry frame carried the weight of 19,000 excited fans’ expectations at the first of two sell-out shows at the cavernous MEN Arena.

And with a little help from some spellbinding light shows and pyrotechnics, The Killers filled the room and kept their audience rapt with adoration from the floor to the rafters all night.

After a storming performance from criminally overlooked support act Louis XIV, the crowd were already hyped up but as the four men from Las Vegas took to the stage and immediately launched into recent hit ‘Human’, they just got wilder.

Darting around the stage and mounting the amplifiers, Brandon Flowers was the epitome of what a rock ‘n’ rolling front man. Behind him, guitarist Dave Keuning and bassist Mark Stoermer chipped in with backing vocals while drummer Ronnie Vannucci Jr beat the band’s insistent rhythms with tireless passion to the end.

The band’s urgent riffs and anthemic choruses whipped the crowd in to a frenzy and the fervour of one adoring middle-aged woman in front of me brought black and white footage of Beatlemania to life.

It was a mere snapshot of the hysteria that has helped the band sell 13 million albums in less than five years.

While the more dance-orientated songs of latest album Day & Age were greeted with due enthusiasm, it was songs from 2004’s Hot Fuss – the debut album that rocketed them to worldwide fame and acclaim – that really sparked the crowd into delerium. ‘Mr Brightside’ and ‘All These Things That I’ve Done’ inspired the biggest singalongs of the night, with the chant “I’ve got soul but I’m not a soldier” echoing around the arena, and the foot stomping singles from follow-up Sam’s Town kept up the pace.

A rare address from a visibly moved Flowers had him doffing their caps to the Manchester bands that “shaped” them. He seemed genuinely honoured to be playing to so many in a city that gave birth and inspiration to their idols. They even played Joy Division’s Shadowplay as if to drive the point home.

But The Killers are a much more contemporary machine: the fans at the front were often too busy taking photos on their mobile phones to enjoy themselves – in my day, you needed at least two pairs of hands just to stay on your feet.

Some would say they are not fit to lick the boots of the forebears they invoked, but for crowd-pleasing, intense, anthemic singalongs, they are hard to beat.

Many in the crowd will have dreamed of filling Flowers’ boots as they bashed colourful buttons along to ‘When You Were Young’ in their living rooms playing video game Guitar Hero 3. A riotous rendition of the song for the show’s finale, complete with eybrow singeing backdrop, left no-one in the arena in any doubt about who deserved to be up there.