A semi-review of the Killers at the Royal Albert Hall

Thanks to someone on the ball … you know who you are ;-) ... we luckily got hold of two tickets to see the Killers at the Royal Albert Hall on Monday evening. Unfortunately I’ve had a terrible winter cold for the last 10 days so I was feeling pretty miserable that night. Nevertheless, I had a rocking time. Without further ado, here’s my synopsis.

The gig was presented by BBC Radio One, and the opening act was a beeb DJ playing old-skool dance music. A bit odd but it got the crowd going. Incidentally, because the gig was at the Albert, a lot of the crowd was made up of older people who are obviously patrons of the Hall and thus got first dibs on tickets. So there were a lot of families, mums with their kids, etc, which was nice.

Acoustics at the Royal Albert Hall are not great, as you may know, so that immediately put me off. The radio DJ was playing thumping beats which caused the most awful 'klakking’ echo in the dome, and he kept fiddling with the tracks: cross-fade, distort, cut the bass, wait for buildup, DROP the bass… repeat. Very amateurish.

But the acoustics weren’t so bad for the main gig. The sound was ok – a lot of reverb and not much clarity on the high-end – just a big sonic wedge coming from 3 guitars and a synthesizer. Which luckily kind of suits their style – those big fuzzy, grainy guitar riffs on top of melodic organ synth, with vocals in the mid to top range. Vocals were lost a bit in the space, but they played a lot of old favourites (read my mind, mr brightside, somebody told me, etc) so the crowd knew every single word for most of the set.

The crowd went absolutely bananas for all the old stuff from Hot Fuss. They also played most of the hits from Sam’s Town which was fantastic. People were hopping around like junebugs and screaming out the lyrics, so they certainly achieved goal number one. The new stuff wasn’t great tho – very 80’s pop, contrived lyrics, much less energy than the older stuff. Maybe it was just because the crowd didn’t know the songs yet, but it felt a bit retro, in a bad way. This NME review has a full set-list for those who are interested.

Brandon Flowers is a good front-man, strutting his stuff, full of bravado and charm. I’d heard negative things about their stage act before, but I really couldn’t find fault with any individual, except that the keyboardist and was partially hidden behind stage props and never came to the front, which was odd. I would have liked to see the whole band playing as a unit, and I didn’t get that feeling. I know that pulling off a live rock gig in front of thousands of people must be one of the hardest things to do, but I can’t help but feel that bands like Live and R.E.M. are just so much better at it – so much better at presenting a unified image of a band that totally controls the stage together.

One of the highlights was when a fan threw a t-shirt at the drummer (who was very good, simple routines but perfect timing and kept changing his cymbals for every track). The drummer took off his own shirt and put on this fan t-shirt, which had a huge picture of one of the sesame street characters (elmo, maybe) banging away on a drumset. The crowd loved it, and he was beaming like a monkey.

On the whole they were very, very good, but I can’t say that listening to them live is better than listening to one of their albums on a good stereo.