Broken Record

Brandon Flowers’ new album, Thrasher, is a beautifully written ode to the Southwest where he grew up. It’s a deeply personal record, shining a light on the people close to him, the lives they’ve lived, and the difficulties they’ve navigated between his childhood in Henderson, Nevada, and Payson, Utah. It also explores some of the dead ends Brandon himself might have easily gone down had he not found another path. Of course, that path led to extraordinary success with the Killers and a sound Brandon describes as a mix of Britpop and British post-punk. But the music that surrounded him growing up was country. His dad and his neighbors played Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, and other country greats. It was a sound Brandon never quite left behind, and one he developed a deeper connection to over the years. So for Thrasher, he went to Nashville’s legendary RCA Studio A, where he recorded with some of the great musicians in the genre: Charlie McCoy, who played on Bob Dylan’s legend