Brandon Flowers - Flamingo (Deluxe Edition) (2010)

This is the return Brandon Flowers deserves.  You may know him better as the lead singer for The Killers.  With his band on hold before another album gets underway, Flowers found the time to record his own solo record.  After The Killers released Hot Fuss, I felt Flowers voice wained due to the fact that he doesn't have a particularly great singing voice.  There are many notes he tries to hit with The Killers that he can't.  Even live, if you listen carefully, Flowers can't hit every single note.  Jeff Saltzman did one hell of a production job making The Killers sounds good on their debut album.  The band, Alan Moulder and the Flood would produce the next two albums (Sam's Town and B-Sides/Rarities album Sawdust) which is where I thought the Killers began to go downhill.  Stuart Price took over production on their last outing, Day & Age and things seem to be turning around again.  Don't get me wrong, The Killers are capable of writing insanely catchy pop songs.  Returning to the solo album though, Stuart Price would return to produce along with help from Daniel Lanois, Brendan O'Brien (famed for producing Stone Temple Pilots, Rage Against The Machine, The Offspring and most recently Bruce Springsteen) and Flowers himself.  Brandon Flowers hasn't sounded this good since Hot Fuss.  If you know what The Killers sound like, don't expect anything to change here with Flowers as he has his and his band's sound down to a formula.  You won't find quite as many uptempo songs on this one (i.e. "Mr. Brightside" or "Somebody Told Me") but you get quite a plethora of sounds.  On a couple of tracks Flowers wanders into almost folk territory.  There are some ballads as well but if you seem unsure all you need to do is give current single "Crossfire" a listen and I'm sure you'll be convinced.  The deluxe edition of the album contains 4 bonus tracks entitled "The Clock Was Tickin'", "Jacksonville", "I Came Here To Get Over You" and "Right Behind You" which are every bit as good as the rest of the album.

 www.myspace.com/brandonflowers