People forget The Killers made an
El Topo-inspired
music video for a song that updates Bowie’s reflective “Time may change me” to a snotty defiant “changes ain’t changin’ me.” “All These Things That I’ve Done” opens with a supplication to God, what first appears to be existential humility (“Is there room for one more son?”) but is quickly unveiled as ambition (“I want to shine on in the hearts of men”). Sure, “I got soul but I’m not a soldier” pushes the track into campy territory, and the video’s mostly play-acting a Jodorowsky-inspired Hollywood set, but it’s at least as good as anything
Lana or Matty are doing. At one point Flowers was Gaga-good at melody writing, and the lyrics—well, no one’s saying they’re not adolescent, but the passion of the delivery compensates.
“Mr. Brightside” is as psychologically complex as anything The Strokes put out ("Soma," really?), but that just earns them a
cheap slam. Loftus is so busy haranguing the band for their commercial success that he can’t figure out a conceptual frame in which the sexy throb of “Brightside” fits its lyrical content. Naturally he dismisses the package: “[Brightside’s] relentless keyboard ‘n’ guitar racket shuns dourness altogether, as Flowers remarkably makes lines about a girlfriend getting off with some other guy resonate as some kind of weird triumph.”
Cue Mark Fisher doing psychoanalysis on Roxy Music:
[Bryan] Ferry’s sensibility is definitely Masochistic. (As opposed to that of the Sixties, which, as Nuttall, for one, suggests, was Sadean. Compare the Sixties-sired Lennon’s “Jealous Guy”—the Sadist apologizes—to Ferry’s reading of the song—the masochist sumptuously enjoying his own pain—for a snapshot of a contrast between the two sensibilities.)
“It was only a kiss, it was only a kiss” Flowers stammers, adrenaline pumping through the bassline, the combination channeling that weird chemical mix of arousal that gets read as desirable or repelling depending on context.
“Now they’re going to bed” escalates into full-blown sexual fantasy: “But she’s touching his…” Flowers is practically panting, ecstatic, as the pre-chorus kicks in “Chest now, he takes off her / dress now… [it’s] taking control.” Late-night alibis get described in terms of giving head, jealous nausea as a narcoleptic, and the constant promise of overcoming looms: “Gotta, gotta be down because I want it all.”
Overcoming connotes surmounting, but it’s equally accomplished through tunneling, a boring straight to the other side. Flowers’ “eager eyes” await opening; revelation is the admission that confirms simultaneously his greatest fear & fantasy.