US Edition 
Brandon Flowers, The Desired Effect, review: 'perfectly honed pop-rock'
The rest of The Killers must fear for their jobs, says Neil McCormick, with frontman Flowers on such glorious solo form
Brandon Flowers’s solo albums are really just Killers albums without the rest of the group, as the frontman has more or less admitted. While his bandmates take another extended break from the rigours of stardom, the driven Flowers offers up a second solo set of perfectly honed pop-rock burnished with immense choruses and shot through with a yearning innate in his reedy voice.
His songwriting aesthetic weds American blue-collar rock with anthemic uplift, modernised with a shiny synth-pop gleam. The latter element is amplified for solo Flowers, producer Ariel Rechtshaid (fresh from Haim and Charli XCX) emphasising the soft, colourful keyboard tones. Rather than sticking to digital pop orthodoxies, arrangements exhibit an appealingly wonky Eighties sensibility, with synths decaying amid banks of multi-tracked harmonies.
Every track offers up a smart blend of snappy lyrics and catchy hooks, and at least half are absolutely glorious, from the storming desperation of Bronski Beat-sampling I Can Change to the off-kilter charge of Diggin’ Up the Heart and wistful restraint of elegiac album-closer The Way It’s Always Been. It’s surely good enough to make the rest of the Killers wonder whether they’ll have a job to come back to.
The Desired Effect is out on Virgin/EMI on May 18
Download this: The Way It’s Always Been