Brandon Flowers Turns Rootsy On Solo LP

The Killers frontman Brandon Flowers will release THRASHER, his first solo album in more than 10 years, on Aug. 21 via Island Records. Recorded in Nashville’s Historic RCA Studio A with longtime collaborators Shawn Everett and Jonathan Rado (Foxygen), the album finds Flowers embracing the country and Americana influences that have long lurked beneath the surface of the Killers’ catalog while delivering what he describes as his most personal and vulnerable songs to date.

The first taste of the project, “Plans,” arrives June 26.

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Though Flowers’ public mythology has long centered on the neon glow of Las Vegas, THRASHER reaches back even further — to his adolescence in Nephi, Utah, where the future rock star absorbed post-punk and Britpop through his older brother while riding the countryside with his father, soundtracked by Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings.

“As I’ve gotten older, I’ve found my way back to my father’s music — ‘Country-Western’ (as he called it) — and discovered that the stories I carry really feel most at home in the skin of this beautiful American tradition,” Flowers says.

That realization led him to a collection of honky-tonk stompers, highway ballads and intimate character studies. Much of THRASHER draws from the lives of friends and family, with Flowers writing in personas that only lightly disguise real stories spanning from his teenage years to the present. The sessions brought together an impressive cast of Nashville heavyweights. Guitarist David Rawlings, longtime foil to Gillian Welch, contributes throughout, alongside acclaimed pedal steel player Bruce Bouton and harmonica legend Charlie McCoy, now 85, whose unmistakable playing appeared on all four of Bob Dylan’s Nashville albums.

Album opener “Does It Ever Cross Your Mind?” contemplates the strange cosmic luck that brings people together, while “One Of Us” honors a brother-in-law who died unexpectedly and “Miss America” traces memories from shopping mall beauty pageants to difficult childhood moments.

Elsewhere, “Paradise” mines the bittersweet realities of family members who spent their lives working in Las Vegas casinos, balancing affection with wry humor. “Red Ground” adds mariachi flourishes to the proceedings, while “Tiger’s Blood” revisits the rural landscapes that informed the Killers’ Pressure Machine, blending THRASHER’s earthy textures with Flowers’ trademark arena-rock grandeur.

The album closes with the sprawling “An American Dream,” a surreal meditation in which Flowers reflects on his mother, watches his aging father, passes billboards promising eternity and somehow encounters Elvis in a Tesla.

Flowers is expected to make some live appearances in support of THRASHER, with details to be announced.

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