Album Review: Brandon Flowers, THRASHER

THRASHER is Brandon Flowers’ first solo album since The Desired Effect in 2015, though it’s almost the opposite of that record’s glossy synth-pop – a warmer collection rooted in country and western and family history. Flowers spent part of his adolescence in Nephi, a small Utah town where he absorbed the likes of Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings.

That makes THRASHER feel like a close relative of The Killers’ Pressure Machine. Both records revisit the small-town midwest, but this seems broader and more autobiographical. The epistolary ‘Miss America’, written in the voice of a maternal ancestor, is a brilliant account of broken hearts, thwarted dreams and household strife. ‘An American Dream’ is a psychedelic family vision recast as a highway song, whilst ‘Does It Ever Cross Your Mind?’ has the road-worn grace of Kris Kristofferson.

Elsewhere, ‘One Of Us’ is a winning honky-tonk jam, while ‘Tiger’s Blood’ has a touch of early Springsteen in its country-rock surge. Behind Flowers, Nashville royalty David Rawlings, Bruce Bouton and Charlie McCoy lend the whole thing grit, swing and old-school authority.

‘Paradise’ gallops through Vegas mythology, while ‘The Red Ground’ scorches the horizon with mariachi brass.

8/10