On the road to heaven, Elvis drives a Tesla.
He pulls over, picks up Brandon Flowers for a ride in his Model X with the “jet-black ’68 comeback leather.”
“He laughed when I asked him if it was all worth it,” Flowers recounts in song over a soft bed of acoustic guitar and a spare bass line as Presley hands him the keys — to the car, to Las Vegas, to “An American Dream,” the name of the tune in question.
Then the chorus kicks in and the song blossoms into this grand hymnal, Flowers’ voice swelling in unison with pedal steel guitar, everything taking flight together.
“Take me back home,” he sings repeatedly at song’s end, his voice doing somersaults as he hangs onto “h-o-o-o-o-o-m-e” for as long as he can.
But just what does home mean for Flowers these days?
That’s the question that looms at the center of “Thrasher,” his new country-informed solo album, Flowers’ third overall and first in over a decade.
The answer?
“It’s bigger — home’s larger for me as I’ve gotten older,” Flowers explains in a recent phone interview. “No matter where I live, if you ask me where I’m from, I’m from Henderson, Nevada. That’s just always going to be my home, and I have just a real tenderness that I feel towards that area of the world.
“But I do have a lot of great memories of my upbringing in Utah,” he continues. “And so I’m doing my best to sort of represent both places.”
This began in earnest on The Killers’ last album, “Pressure Machine,” a gritty song cycle populated by characters rife with a sense of longing, of wanting something more, set in the small town of Nephi, Utah, where Flowers spent a good portion of his formative years. The record largely eschewed the bombast of past Killers albums in favor of an earthier, Americana bent with mandolin, pedal steel and harmonica flourishes.
“Thrasher” doesn’t continue this narrative directly, but it’s rooted in the soil of Nephi, nonetheless. Think of it as a different flower growing in the same garden.
“It certainly is linked,” he says. “I just had such a fulfilling experience making ‘Pressure Machine’ that I didn’t want to leave it. I was being greedy. I just wanted to stay in that world, and a lot of what you’ll hear on ‘Thrasher’ is sort of the fruit of that.
“There were still more stories to tell,” he continues. “And there were still more memories.”
Old sounds, new inspiration
About those memories: They were stirred in large part by his father’s taste in music — think Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Merle Haggard — which inspired the throwback sound of “Thrasher.”
When he was a teenager, Flowers favored new wave over Nashville’s old guard.
But as the decades passed, he’d take a circuitous path — the scenic route — to the songbooks of those Music City mavericks he first heard in his dad’s pickup truck.
“There was sort of a road — a slow road — back to it,” the 45-year-old says of country music. “It began with finding and falling in love with American music — roots rock ’n’ roll and heartland rock.
“Bruce Springsteen and Tom Petty and people like that entered my world in my mid- to late 20s — and it was sort of a surprise to me,” he continues. “That has just slowly been a gateway to my dad, back to my father’s music.”
And he found a benefit in hearing music associated with his youth through adult ears.
“I think it takes a little time with some of the storytelling and some of the content of the songs. I think that it did well for me to revisit it having had some life experience,” he says. “When you’re young, you’re just so quick to judge things — especially if it’s your parents, right? With time and with life experience, it just made a lot more sense.”
It also made sense for Flowers to explore this more country-leaning side of himself on his own — not that it’s hard to imagine some of these tunes, like the heartfelt yet hard-swinging single “Tiger’s Blood,” finding a home in The Killers’ catalog.
But he didn’t want to play ball hog during the songwriting process for the band’s next album, either.
“A lot of this solo music comes from me just not wanting to inundate The Killers with Flowers songs,” he explains. “I’m trying to give the guys a shot there in the studio. We really would like for the next Killers record to be a true collaboration and for everybody to take ownership over it. That’s when everybody’s happiest.
“I’ve just had a real prolific couple of years, and the songs were gravitating towards this country genre and Americana genre,” he continues. “It just felt like it was something different.”
Getting personal
“Some fit the mold like a book on the shelf,” Brandon Flowers sings on “Angel,” an equally wistful and tough-nosed “Thrasher” standout with a fireball guitar solo. “Some are hardwired for something else.”
In Nephi, Flowers learned to count himself among the latter: He didn’t exactly fit in there at first.
“New kid in the county, crowd-shy / Hunch in the shoulders with gelled-up hair …” he recollects on “Tiger’s Blood.” “You’re a stranger now.”
But as Flowers observes on “Angel”: “There are some things that you can’t outrun.”
One of those things is where you’re from and how it shapes who you are, who you’ll become.
As such, “Thrasher” contains some of Flowers’ most autobiographical moments and ranks high among his most personal records.
It’s lyrically unflinching in places: On “Miss America,” he recalls his older sister’s escape from domestic abuse, one incident resulting in bloodshed. “My little brother watched / My mama cleaned it up,” Flowers sings through her eyes.
Honky-tonk foot stomper “One of Us” maintains this familial theme, written in tribute to a brother-in-law who died in recent years. (“It was a gift from the beginning, that keeps a man alive / That’s you in your children’s voices / That’s you in their eyes.”)
But as Flowers noted, he’s a man of several homes, and “Thrasher” also mines his Vegas origins.
“Paradise” chronicles the mounting challenges of life as a blue-collar casino worker, including his stint as a valet attendant before his music career took off. (Flowers even once penned an op-ed for the RJ in support of the profession.)
“I’ve been away from the town for about eight years now, but it’s still the lifeblood for a lot of my family, the Strip,” he says. “I grew up with my uncles and my cousins and my grandparents, everybody worked on the Strip and supported their families. So, I don’t feel too far removed. I still feel like I’m very much a part of it.”
‘So much history in that room’
Though “Thrasher” revolves around Flowers’ Southwestern upbringing, he left these parts to make it, recording at Nashville’s famed RCA Studio A, where icons such as Dolly Parton, Loretta Lynn, Willie Nelson and George Strait have laid down some of their most celebrated works.
“It’s one of the great rooms in recording history,” Flowers says. “You just kind of want to rise to the occasion when you walk into a room like that. You sort of need to check yourself for a second and make sure that you belong there — and you better make it sound like you belong there.
“I had so much fun,” he adds. “I felt welcomed by the players, and they seemed to really respond to the music and so much history in that room. It was one of the great recording experiences in my life.”
“Thrasher” was tracked with a who’s who of ace Nashville session players, including longtime Gillian Welch guitarist David Rawlings, pedal steel player Bruce Bouton, who’s performed on all of Garth Brooks’ studio albums, and 85-year-old harmonica great Charlie McCoy, who appeared on all four of Bob Dylan’s seminal Nashville records.
They were productive, cutting 23 songs in three weeks, half of which made it onto “Thrasher,” the rest saved for a future record.
As for the album’s name — slang for a brawler who thrashes his foes — well, that goes back to his father as well. When Flowers moved to Nephi, the local boys had a way of welcoming newcomers with their fists.
Dad wanted him to learn how to punch back. “Thrasher” is Flowers doing just that.
“The title comes from a little story about my dad trying to teach me how to fight,” he recalls, noting that it didn’t go well. “It’s that funny thing with fathers and sons: Somewhere inside of me is that young kid that wants to prove to my dad that I’m tough.
“And I am; it’s just different,” he continues. “This is my way of fighting: with music. Landing choruses more than jabs.”
Contact Jason Bracelin at [email protected] or 702-383-0476. Follow @jasonbracelin76 on Instagram.