Killers, The - Wonderful Wonderful LP

"(Frontman Brandon Flowers) bares more on Wonderful Wonderful than ever before, and the result is the band's best album since 2006's Sam's Town. 4 Stars." — NME "Has it really been a half-decade since we last heard from The Killers? Maybe so — Wonderful Wonderful is their first LP since 2012's Battle Born — but their renown has seemingly only grown in the years since, with the band graduating to festival headliners as 'Mr. Brightside' has endured as the veritable 'Wonderwall' of the '00s. Whether this set will be as arena-ready as Hot Fuss and Sam's Town remains to be seen, but lead single 'The Man' shows the band now has a strut to befit their marquee status." — Billboard The Killers have set a new chart record as they scored their fifth number one album with Wonderful Wonderful. By making it to the top of the charts once more, the group have become the first ever international act to achieve five Number One albums in a row. Wonderful Wonderful has also topped the Official Vinyl Albums Chart and the Official Record Store Chart, which compiles the biggest-selling records at the U.K.'s independent record stores. The album sold 52,000 copies across all formats, outselling the rest of the top five combined. Wonderful Wonderful is a record of deep personal revelations made by a battle-worn American band, writes NME. Their record is inspired, exploratory and just plain wonderful. The Killers that reconvened at Battle Born Studios in Las Vegas to start writing their fifth album in October 2015 had undergone more upheavals than a Bey'n'Jay Bake Off special. There'd been group therapy to help heal their unspoken rifts, their bassist had gone part-time, Ronnie Vannucci, Mark Stoermer and Brandon Flowers had made celebrated offshoot albums, Ronnie had gone through a divorce and lost his father early in the sessions and, like a glittery raven leaving a fake Eiffel Tower, Brandon was planning to move out of Vegas to Utah, leaving Mark as the only Vegas resident. The keystone track for Wonderful Wonderful is "Rut," an amorphous soft rocker delving into the dark times engulfing Chez Flowers, and his support for his wife, who is treated for PTSD. Tana Flowers' suicidal thoughts were the cause of Brandon cutting short his tour for The Desired Effect and the root of the Flowers family's move to Utah, since Vegas holds bad memories for her. Tana's reservations about having her private issues splashed across the new Killers album evaporated as the songs won her over. "It bonded me and Tana in a way that I never foresaw," Brandon says, "because it helped me to understand her better and be more compassionate."