Thinking Big

J. Edward Keyes on Shuffle

by J. Edward Keyes

The Killers Sam's Town (Island)

The Hold Steady Boys and Girls in America (Vagrant)

What's frustrating is that there are pieces of a good album all over Sam's Town, but the band has no idea how to put them together. Case in point: "Why Do I Keep Counting?", a slow-burner that comes late in the record. The song's got a fantastic, one-line refrain, Flowers and his backing chorus chanting "Help me get down, I can make it, help me get down" with increasing urgency. It's the kind of high drama you build to, tagging it onto the end of the song to bring the house down. Instead, the group first drops it at the 90-second mark and then repeats it ad nauseam, blunting its effectiveness and killing its charm. Overstatement is Sam's Town's only trick. Its weariness amazes.

The Hold Steady also have their sights set on the Great American Rock Record, and if Boys and Girls in America is not nearly as catastrophic as Sam's Town, it still fails to summon the scotch-soaked Siddharthas who populated their last two outings. Though it opens with the best song the group has ever written, a 70-millimeter masterpiece called "Stuck Between Stations," the record speeds steadily downhill, bottoming out with a rock operetta that features guest vocals from — wait for it! — Elizabeth Elmore and Dave Pirner. America is beset by strange production choices: The backing vocals are too loud, the bass is blunted and the piano sounds like it was overdubbed as an afterthought. But worse, the songs lack that desperate velocity and Craig Finn's lyrics, once a screwball junk shop of philosophy and pop culture, seem strained and overworked. The record is still half-great, particularly the parched ballad "Citrus" and the amphetamine fever dream "Chips Ahoy!", but from a band that's already authored two classics, half-great feels like ho-hum.

(j_keyes@citypaper.net)