Album Review: "The Desired Effect" by Brandon Flowers

Culture is cyclical. Every so many years, people get nostalgic and start re-creating things from their childhood. We just have to wait around thirty years or so until the people who were too young to do anything but lionize the artists of the time to be the ones creating the art. For instance, sitcom characters of the early 2000s had plenty of references to '70s shows, but more recently we've got shows with explicit mentions of '80s shows like Community's extended riff on who the actual boss of Who's The Boss was, 30 Rock's ridiculous Night Court reunion, or any random Happy Endings episode mentioning anything from The Golden Girls to Three's Company. There's been a rash of filmmakers putting out passion projects that are very reminiscent of E.T./Close Encounters of the Third Kind-era Spielberg, like JJ Abrams' Super 8 and Brad Bird's Tomorrowland. These are the movies that these guys have spent years trying to get to a position of power so that they can make, and they are clearly influenced by spectacle-worshipping films of the '80s. My point is, it seems like it takes about three decades for things to become cool again.

Sometimes this can be terrible. If '80s fashion started creeping into my life, I'd be horrified. But there's good and bad with every time period, and, luckily, there was more 30 years ago than just disco and dance floors for Brandon Flowers to pluck from for his new solo album, The Desired Effect.

The album is '80s in the best way possible. There's just a vibe that takes the mindset and transports it to a modern setting. Just watch the video for "Lonely Town" and you'll get what I mean. The videos, the cover, the sounds, and even the lyrics all push a theme, and that's one of the highest compliments I can pay a collection of songs.

Sometimes people ask me what era I wish I was born in. They think that because I listen to a lot of older music that I'm going to say something like the '70s or '80s, but my answer is always the same: I wouldn't change when I was born. When choosing between 1976 and 2015, why wouldn't I pick the one in which I can listen to both The Stones' Beast of Burden and Josh Ritter's The Beast in Its Tracks. When choosing between 1972 and 2015, there's only one of which I can listen to both Neil Young's Harvest and Blitzen Trapper cover Neil Young's Harvest in it's entirety. Between 1970 or 2015, there's only one option that allows me to hear Bob Dylan's best album and his son's band's best album. Things don't stop existing once the calendar year ends.

For me, to say, I wish I was born in 1980 is to say, I wish that all of the music created after that vanishes from my brain, and also the world would revert to the way society was then, too. Imagine if we went back to a time where this was considered not only acceptable, but good advertising:

Or if we went back to a time where the American President refused to give aid to civil rights movements, and instead insisted that boosting the economy in itself would indirectly aid the minorities that the civil rights groups were fighting for, which is obviously not what happened, considering how much the economic gap between races is quite similar to the wage gap in general.

Or if we went back to a time where not everyone could marry the person they loved most.

We're not close to equality now, but we're technically closer than we've ever been, especially in art, music included. Why would I want to go backwards, both in social America and music development?

Besides that, if we go back to 1980, we'd be missing out on people who actually grew up in that time and loved that culture come of age and turn that love back into their own art. There are a ton of musicians now that grew up with '70s folk music that began recreating and even at times improving on the genre in the '90s and '00s. There's a ton of music now that takes cues from classic rock and roll, and it's even more spread out now, so there's technically more good music coming out now than there was 50 years ago, you just have to wade through more to find it.

From 1980, we would have had to wait 35 years to hear a great album that defines itself through sounds and sentiments made popular in that decade. Brandon Flowers' The Desired Effect is a straight up pop album that lyrically name-checks the Gravitron from your local town's summer fair, visually name-checks the superstar style album cover (see below), and sonically name-checks everything from Madonna to Born in the USA/Tunnel of Love-era Springsteen to Prince. The credits on the album include people who've worked with artists of the bygone era of synth/disco-infused pop like Peter Gabriel, The Pet Shop Boys, John Mellencamp, Bob Seger, Styx, plus the singer for the band that recently released another album that could have come out 30 years ago, Danielle Haim of Haim.

There are some songs on here that sound like they could've been Killers songs. "Diggin' Up the Heart" is the "From Here On Out" of this album, in that it's a catchy gem that is slightly different from the rest of the album, and will most likely get over-looked, because of its difference and placement on the album. The structure of "Can't Deny My Love" is Killers bombast all the way. It'd be interesting to have seen if this could've worked as a Killers album. The band has a commitment to the album as an art form, what with each of their albums shifting in different directions than the previous one, because of a commitment to having the songs work with the songs around them. Sam's Town got the shaft initially because of this, but the band's willingness to create a sound for a little while and then create a new one has continued, and the ambition of that album stands out as one of the best things they've done. Battle Born is my favorite of theirs, and this one might have given it a run. But I can see how it was too big of a departure for Brandon to put the band on this one. (Luckily, he did co-write one of the songs with Conor Oberst of Bright Eyes and Taylor Goldsmith of Dawes.)

Occasionally, The Desired Effect dips into the undesirable aspects of '80s-era music: the song "I Can Change" is a pretty cliche foundation to build a song around, which is essentially, "I'll change for you, here's how." The song's sound keeps it from being a dud, and it's simplicity can be endearing at times, like when he says "I'll be what you're looking for." It's a line that surely could've been in any number of chart-topping pop songs when Brandon was 14. But the few places where this album exhibits such simplicity are still endearing in the best possible way; in the way that a child pretending to mow the lawn with a toy the way his/her father/mother does is endearing and almost the most gorgeous thing ever. It comes from love, and from a place that's too young to over-think.

'80s culture was great in some ways, and even the ways that aren't great become great to someone who's just coming into their own, culturally speaking. But there's a whole host of reasons that 2015 is better than any year from 1980-1989, and The Desired Effect happens to be one of them.