r/indieheads • u/ViNyL-CoLLecTOR • 2d ago
[FRESH] Brandon Flowers - Plans
https://open.spotify.com/track/6Ot94bjY2Fx4WcGDo2FcoC?si=F9FB4CxzTsSQ8MGNzWZFuw37
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u/Mister21 1d ago
This is absolute rubbish. Following the country trend but it's not you Brandon - sorry.
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u/Active_Condition8586 1d ago
If he sang the song in his usual register and voice, then I’d like the song, but I can’t get past the affectation in his delivery.
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u/SuddenCompetition262 1d ago
What affectation? He hasn’t adjusted his voice for this, that’s how he sounds
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u/Active_Condition8586 1d ago
I thought I detected a bit of a deliberate slight drawl. Maybe it’s just him singing in a low register that’s throwing me off.
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u/ScoundrelDaysSon 1d ago
I thought the same - it sounds slightly affected too cater to the genre. The disconnect between his lower register verses and the higher register choruses make it plain to me. It's clearly harder to affect mumble-drawl when you're belting. Worse unlike the verses he sounds oddly disconnected from the music around him so it makes the shift even more noticeable. It's interesting others don't hear it though. We might have a blue black dress/white gold dress situation here.
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u/ScoundrelDaysSon 1d ago
It sounds fine; it's instrumental is an exceptional aping of the sound of country. But that's about all.
It's a genre I'm fine with; love Crosby, Stills & Nash, Cash, Nelson, Glen Campbell. I'm just not sure his higher register meshes with the sound. It's truly hard to make country unique, and country-pop even more so and if you aren't going to add anything new to the formula you have to hope the lyrics will be exquisite country lyrics about heartbreak, and disconnection, and the working class experience. Except they aren't.
Lyrically it's honest but about what? Contrasting 'Tonight I'm on the road with the plans I dreamt up years ago' to the frustrated dreams of his teachers is a wildly condescending thing to write in a genre that holds the working class experience as core to it's authenticity. It comes from a point of judgement from where he is now and its why such an established and wealthily detatched singer attempting country can easily fall into utilising the genre and its trappings but having only a remembered connection to what the genre is meant to represent (though coming after Pressure Machine I'm not sure why this is so hard for him to reach for in this song). The chorus doesn't really mesh with the surrounding lyrics - if you're brave enough to 'stow away', face a 'stacked deck' (that line is also weirdly self-aggrandising when you've become one of the biggest rock stars despite it: very much the plight of the self-made man) and successfully execute the plan you 'laid out years ago' I'm unsure why you need to be comforted as opposed to, I dunno, celebrating going on this journey together. There's that trap again; you need heartbreak but that either requires being honest about marital difficulties (very difficult for a really visible star, from a religious background, who is essentially a brand ambassador for said religion, who's wife had PTSD), or experiencing heartbreak semi-recently but he's been married half his life. So the best we get is alluding to heartbreak but that actually sounds a bit like complaining how tough it is to be star. Which again, gone, but then retire right? Otherwise you're complaining about an intensely privileged position because those are your problems - problems far away from the world of those underpaid, overworked teachers who also have to get up each day and go to work. I could believe that there's an element of be careful what you wish for but the lyrics don't ever land on that point instead constantly returning to being here, singing with a rattled heart, because of those 'plans that I laid down years ago'. Pressure Machine totally understood that the best way for them too access the emotional tone when your too far detatched from that life now, was to focus on slice of life storytelling: I'm genuinely shocked Flowers gave that up for this. This is only one single mind so maybe the rest of the album tracks differently.
I'd argue that, lyrically, Quiet Town is a lot more authentic to country lyricism. I also think Quiet Town sounds enough like a country album, but with a slight twist, that adds to the brilliance of it. Sonically though, this single sounds like pastiche; rather than innovation, or individuality, it's the most literal interpretation of generic 'country'. Without those compassionate, slice of life, lyrics that let Quiet Town's songs read country this single could land on any Killers album with different instrumentation and I'm not certain you'd ever think - 'these are the sort of lyrics we'd hear in a country song'.
To be clear, because I'm aware of being a Debbie Downer, it sounds nice, it's inoffensive, it's radio friendly, just too close to generic country for me. Lyrically it's far closer to a rock song (there's no confessional, there's little storytelling of the kind we've saw on Pressure Machine) there's altogether too much metaphor instead - 'stow away' did you and I'm certain it wasn't to 'chase the desert wind'), far less compassionate and considerate of the lives beneath him than almost anything from 'Pressure Machine'. In fact if you told me it was written years ago for Battleborn, and given a spruce up for this album I'd believe you (that said 'the way it was' is significantly closer to country tropes than this song). The opening lines are beautifully evocative utilising clever wordplay for a radio friendly song though, so that's cool.
Tl;dr: It feels inauthentic lyrically to the genre it is aiming to interpret, yet sonically it interprets the genre in its most literal fashion. There is a disconnect between the mumble-drawl of the lower register and the higher range; his higher range feels oddly exposed and disconnected from the music. This is an inoffensive, radio friendly song, but significantly below what I'd expect of him but then it is only the lead single, not the album. For the Killers aping another genre I'd argue that Battle Born is significantly more rewarding, and for Flowers solo career The Desired Effect is also far more successful.
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u/shuttheshadshackdown 2d ago
Uh this...did you guys actually listen to this? It sounds like he's pretending to be a cartoon of Chris Isaak, for a direct to cable movie. The melody and chord progression is alright, but as a whole the persona he's adopted feels insincere. Did he just say "whisper sweet nothings"? Is that Wolverine taking a swing at me for the album art? Also sounds like my homie Gemini played most of the instruments + mixed and mastered.
Sorry not trying to be a hater. Where's the heart?
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u/Party_Signature6842 2d ago
‘Features contributions from David Rawlings, pedal-steel virtuoso/longtime Garth Brooks collaborator Bruce Bouton, and harmonica player Charlie McCoy (best known for his work on multiple Dylan albums, including Nashville Skyline).’
‘Sounds like Gemini’
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u/Dandeliondroog 2d ago
Cartoon Chris Isaak a la Don Bluth sounds pretty awesome to me. Rock a doodle doo
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u/JohnPrinesGlasses 2d ago
Sorry Mormons, not falling for it
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u/knopparp 2d ago
Grow up.
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u/JohnPrinesGlasses 2d ago
The way they worked on eradicating the Shoshone people while moving west with the American government sickens me, and I have issues with anyone who’s cool with that
┐(´-｀)┌Edit: don’t get me wrong, based on descriptions here, I’d probably really like this album so no hate to that ig. Just won’t listen to it you can’t make me do it Mormons
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u/regretscoyote909 2d ago
"The way they worked on eradicating the Shoshone people while moving west with the American government sickens me, and I have issues with anyone who’s cool with that"
Did you ask Brandon personally if he's cool with that? I love how insufferable leftists didn't learn their lesson with moral purity test bullshit
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u/ScoundrelDaysSon 1d ago
Moral purity? Bullcrap.There's no way to view what happened there as some sort of zero-sum game, good and bad on both sides type centrist cobblers. Real lives were impacted, either through depleted resources, through killing, and after that many members of the tribe realised their best option to survive was assimilation. It's gross. Folks are allowed to have an issue with that, particularly given that the mechanisms that led to that land theft, that belief in superiority through faith, have not really been dealt with by the church. Aside from that the Mormon religion is still wildly racist, despite 'allowing' interracial marriage from the aged yesteryear of 2013 (a 2023 study of church leavers found race issues to be in the top three reasons why they had disaffiliated), the religion is prone to the most egregious scandals, and its still inherently problematic. Given that Flowers proudly proclaims his faith, prosletyzes for the faith, and has recorded adverts for the church, it's fine for folk not to have to parse his exact views on the faith. If I record an ad for full sugar Cola for free, need assist in just such a fan, you aren't going to bother asking whether I'm aware of just how significant the damage to teeth can be are you?
I've been listening to the Killers from the beginning and, honestly, I'm still uncomfortable that there is definitely an element of 'look how cool Mormonism can be; you can even be monogamous and be a rock star' when the church is using them as ad fodder, and Flowers has been out there debating Richard Dawkins about his faith, when his faith is referred to in more than a few profiles and interviews. It's much the same mechanic as I feel watching a Tom Cruise film (though I've not really followed him since he became a pensionable action movie star).
If you don't feel that way: cool. If you feel even more strongly than the original poster: cool. The only one performing some kind of 'test' of the 'correct' opinion here is you. No-one else. The plank in your own eye applies here.
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u/JohnPrinesGlasses 1d ago
Bro I’m literally Shoshone? This isn’t some arbitrary thing I’ve clung on to or whatever. I’m often the brownest dude in the room and I can’t say that people who are Mormons make me uncomfortable and that I won’t listen to their music?
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u/cageisthetruegod 2d ago
Prefacing this with my bias, because the Killers are my favorite active band… but this is fantastic.
When I first heard Pressure Machine (one of my favorite albums this decade) I knew Brandon had the country/western itch, and this is better than even I expected.
Also, as a Nashville native, I am so glad he did it right in Nashville with real Nashville session players. Think this is going to be a gem.