‘Indie’ is as amorphous a genre as any, especially now in 2017, with its slew of releases from the titans of mid-to-late 2000s indie – freshly signed to majors, more often than not. The adhesion of the indie label has been tenuously stuck on The Killers since their emergence – their debut album Hot Fuss bearing the almost antithetical Glamorous Indie Rock & Roll.
Time has been kind to The Killers. Nostalgia has bolstered their early back catalogue, the quality of songwriting and production resulting in a more far-reaching legacy than their lo-fi leaning contemporaries. Not content with the unfurling crest of nostalgia, The Killers returned, re-invigorated, with brash single The Man – the first salvo from their fifth album, Wonderful Wonderful.
At this stage, there’s little to lose for The Killers, facilitating a lack of inhibition when it came to constructing Wonderful Wonderful. “The main slogan I remember hearing during the record is ‘abandoned taste,’” drummer Ronnie Vannucci Jr states down the line from Utah.
“It was an interesting experiment for us. It seemed totally counter-intuitive, but ended up still being part of it. We took second looks, but still tried to retain a level of getting the right take, getting the right performance, and making sure the punctuation is there, but just doing it in a different way. Seeing if there’s an opportunity for a rad drum solo, a different beat. When arrows pointed right, we tried to go left.”
The Killers’ early songs, particularly Mr Brightside, have been imbued with a deeper sense of meaning with the passage of time, becoming a part of people’s lives – a common thread that fosters genuine emotion, such as the viral footage of an Irish wake singalong, or merely a reference point used to bolster meme relatability. “We are discovering it, and it’s a little weird,” Vannucci Jr reasons.
“You don’t want to crawl up your own arse so far that you feel so self-important that your band is so big, that Mr. Brightside is like Happy Birthday. But it’s interesting to know that you’ve left this smart, sort of indelible mark that you don’t think about.
“There are those anniversaries, notches in the belt, or rungs in the ladder. It’s not something we think about. Nobody skips around, and you’re not patting yourselves on the back about it. But it’s nice. It becomes a bigger thing. Larger than ourselves and it feels gratifying, because you know that you’ve made some sort of dent, some sort of mark on people. That feels cool.”
While their songs grow to achieve a sense of timelessness, The Killers have adapted the way they operate as they grow older. Long-serving members Dave Keuning and Mark Stoermer still makeup one-half of the band, but have effectively retired from touring (including the upcoming visit to Australia to perform at the AFL Grand Final). “We’re not 21 years old anymore, and people have sort of realised their spot in the world with life changes going on,” Ronnie says.
“With Mark, I don’t want to speak out of school here, but he lost his father last year, and he figured, ‘I want to do some things before I die, too.’ It was a real perspective shift, and priorities changed. Mark never really enjoyed touring much, neither did Dave. It’s a fucking drag for some people. It’s a lot of moving, and it’s a lot of sacrifice. Especially if you have a family, and you’re trying to maintain some sort of normalcy. We’re respectful of that, and they’re respectful of our decision to go and support this record.”
While Ronnie wasn’t quite aware of the expected audience for the AFL Grand Final – “Did you say 100,000? Geez, no pressure…” – he has completed some preliminary research as to where the benchmark sits. “I don’t really know what to expect, personally. I have seen the Meat Loaf video,” he states, “And that was pretty heavy.”
