Midway through the Killers' sold-out concert in Vancouver last week, it finally hit me. There was lead singer Brandon Flowers, with his scruffy new beard, skinny jeans and bolo tie, at the centre of a spaghetti western-themed stage, strung with fairground flags and neon lights.
Swinging his outstretched arms from side to side, with fingers snapping and scrawny knees knocking, Flowers almost looked like a startled young Courtney Cox, awkwardly dancing her heart out after Bruce Springsteen plucked her from the audience and pulled her onstage for his 1984 video Dancing in the Dark.
Aha. So that's what all these comparisons to the Boss are about.
I'm being facetious, of course, but the analogy is somewhat fitting now that the former glam band from Las Vegas has -- to borrow from the Boss -- changed its clothes, its hair, its face.
Last time we checked their look in the mirror, when the Killers were riding high on Hot Fuss (their debut album, which shot out of nowhere to sell five million copies worldwide), they were wearing eyeliner, channelling the Cures with glittery new-wave pop tempos and being touted as the best British band this side of the Atlantic.
For Sam's Town, the band's highly anticipated follow-up -- which made its debut at No. 1 on the Canadian Nielsen Soundscan chart last week -- the group has grown handlebar mustaches, metaphorically jumped behind the wheel of a Chevy, cranked up the bass and reinvented itself as an all-American, anthem-sized rock 'n' roll guitar band.
To almost anyone who will listen, Flowers has been gushing praise for Bruce Springsteen, explaining how his new-found appreciation for Born in the USA played a major part in the metamorphosis.
He also boasted to the British music weekly NME that Sam's Town was "one of the best albums of the past 20 years."
This startling self-confidence, combined with the immodest references to rock's biggest icons (Flowers has also referenced U2, Oasis and Queen), unleashed a critical hammering. Rolling Stone's Rob Sheffield said the Killers "leave no pompous arena cliché untweaked"; Entertainment Weekly's Jody Rosen said the album plays like "a parody of rock bombast"; and in The New York Times, Sia Michel called it "a classic case of a young band overreaching to assert its significance."
Flowers is unrepentant.
"I'm not ashamed of how much I love [Springsteen]," the 25-year-old singer says backstage before the Vancouver concert.
"You know when they say a pregnant woman glows," elaborates Flowers, a devout Mormon, and proud uncle to 17 nieces and nephews. "That's what I felt like when I was falling in love with his music. It gave me fuel for this album.
"But we're not trying to rewrite Born to Run," he adds. "And there are three other guys in the band who couldn't care less about Bruce Springsteen. It's put us under a lot of -- I don't know," he trails off, twiddling a new toothbrush still wrapped in its packaging.
Pressure?
"Sometimes I have my doubts," he says. "But it started off with a bang and we've got to keep firing. I still think it's a great album."
The lead singer's aura of preciousness probably doesn't endear him much to his critics. Take the replacement toothbrush, for example.
"My old one fell in the bathroom," he explains.
In the toilet?
"No, on the floor. But you know, at a gig," he says with a squeamish shudder that strips a layer of bravado off the new tough-guy image.
Flowers says it was his travels abroad and subsequent disenchantment that inspired him to drum up the nostalgia and get back to his wild western roots. In Europe, he says, he was often treated poorly because of his country's foreign policies.
