Hot Fuss

Hot Fuss is a multi-faceted, consistently interesting and enjoyable synth-rock album with strengths across the songwriting, singing, and playing fields.

What's apparent from playing this album is that almost everything they've got is a killer single.

They're not the first--or even the fifteenth--recent band to draw on that era [of the 1980s], but they're among the most assured. [#27, p.138]

The band only falter on Fuss' slower, boring numbers, which consistently lack the zest and vibrancy of their uptempo counterparts. [Jul 2004, p.146]

In less capable hands the results could be unsophisticated and cringeworthy - as it is, they team the neon luminosity of Duran Duran with the camp, boyish charm of Dexys Midnight Runners - and are as likeable as either of them.

Wait a minute... you mean this isn't a Duran Duran album?

The Rapture are artier, and Franz Ferdinand are more, well, Scottish, but this Las Vegas band has actual pop songs -- in spades.

The Killers have made half of the album of the year. Lucky that now we've got Napster, you only need to buy half. [5 Jun 2004, p.55]

This album’s appeal is so superficial that those who don’t cotton to guys trying to look pretty while the bombs drop should avoid this entirely.

Most of Hot Fuss slides by without creating much of a stir, but it's got too many memorable moments to be written off.

Things go awry in places... but somewhere in a parallel universe Molly Ringwald is running down a high school corridor to the sound of The Killers. [Jul 2004, p.116]

Shimmery, metallic and fairly unspectacular city boy rock. [#7]

It's hard to deny the sparkle and fade of Depeche Mode beats and the sensual allure of Duran Duran. After 25 years, those sounds still hold up; by 2004, however, it's an incredible task to pull this kind of thing off without selling yourself to the tastes of the masses.

Brandon Flowers has a horrible, honking seal bark of a voice.... Faced with this significant disadvantage, The Killers have cannily crafted a wall-of-sound songwriting style so bombastic it almost suits Flowers' sledgehammer vocals.

So, it's plain that The Killers have made a record more concerned with artifice than artistry. If the intent is to place their album's principal teases on the next Now That's What I Call Music compilation, then bravo.

What's most shocking about Hot Fuss, though, is how, after five sensational songs, the rest of the album completely implodes, as the other six tracks get weighed down by too much production, a lack of memorable hooks, and some inexplicable musical touches that may have sounded clever in the studio, but wind up sounding disastrous on the CD.

Isn't it a little too early for a Strokes tribute band? [18 Jun 2004, p.86]

Despite the frigid bore of the album's latter half, the initial grandiosity of the songwriting and vocals make it possible that the Killers can avoid the bleak fate shared by other new wave gimmick acts.