Album Review: The Desired Effect – Brandon Flowers

Earlier this year, Brandon Flowers followed another break from The Killers with his second solo album, The Desired Effect. I don’t quite know what desired effect Flowers is trying to achieve, but for me this album is easily one of the best to come out of 2015.

The album is transcendent of a Bowie record, taking us through a glitzy Vegas party of groovy dance numbers. The album starts with an uplifting horn section in “Dreams Come True” which has punchy lyrics telling his listener that ‘everything is alright’. From this the record enters an 80s synth-disco fusion with songs like “Still Want You” and “Lonely Town”. The latter using some clever auto tuning (which I never really think is a good idea, but in this case it offers a nice interlude into a gospel chorus).

However the record ends with, what I believe to be, the best song of the album, “The Way It’s Always Been”. This is where his vocals are most raw. The song starts with his voice and rhythm and shifts into a psychedelic, Sgt. Pepper-esque journey, with sincere organs and voice dubbings.

The album was produced with Ariel Rechtshaid, who had previously worked with Charlie XCX and Haim, and alongside Flowers has conjured one of the best produced albums of the year.

In my opinion, Flowers and The Killers are creating a huge legacy amongst the industry and could be set to join music royalty alongside their heroes like U2 and Dire Straits. And Brandon Flowers surely has to go down as one of the greatest songwriters of our generation. A key element to his success is his ability to not just write about love, but also hope and relevant world issues (in some cases very similar to Noel Gallagher), Flowers himself said in a recent interview that he doesn’t feel the need to write about generic shit like sex and drugs; since there’s a lot more things going on in the world, he admits it’s easier to write about that.

I saw Flowers earlier this year, pretty soon after the album came out, and the album is just as impressive live, so make sure you see him or even The Killers live so you can say you’ve seen one of the greats.