Brandon Flowers goes for pop glory on The Desired Effect
Brandon Flowers
The Desired Effect (Island)
Listeners can be forgiven for approaching Brandon Flowers’s sophomore solo album with fairly low expectations. After all, his band the Killers’ sense of self-importance has long since outweighed its ability to deliver a catchy hit, and the frontman’s 2010 solo debut, Flamingo, failed to yield anything as memorable as, say, “Mr. Brightside”.
It comes as a pleasant surprise, then, that The Desired Effect has a number of knockout pop tunes. The album was produced by hotly tipped studio guru Ariel Rechtshaid (whose credits include Beyoncé, Haim, and Vampire Weekend), and he helped Flowers to achieve a slick sound that fuses towering rock with slinky ’80s pop. Particularly infectious standouts include the thudding dance grooves of “I Can Change” and the giddy, horn-blasted soul of “Still Want You”. The latter cut resembles a global-warming-themed update on David Bowie’s “Modern Love”.
Elsewhere among these 10 tracks, opener “Dreams Come True” charges hard out of the gate with blaring brass hooks and fist-pumping choruses, the synth-draped melancholy of “Between Me and You” recalls Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the U.S.A. classic “I’m on Fire”, and “Diggin’ Up the Heart” is hip-waggling, synth-splashed rock ’n’ roll boogie.
Even though the last few numbers on this front-loaded album fail to pack much of a punch, The Desired Effect nevertheless contains some of the most radio-ready melodies we’ve heard from Flowers in a decade. If he was aiming to revitalize his reputation as one of the mainstream’s preeminent pop singers, this album ought to have, ahem, the desired effect.
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