The Killers’ ‘Sam’s Town’ clearly reflects their love for Las Vegas

They were musical orphans, in a way, a band without a home.

At least that’s what they sounded like, until they made a record as evocative of Las Vegas as the empty pockets of a homeward-bound tourist.

Twelve years ago, The Killers became the biggest band ever to come from this town upon the release of their first record, “Hot Fuss,” which sold over 7 million copies worldwide and ranked No. 33 on Rolling Stone’s “ 100 Greatest Debut Albums of All Time.”

Here’s the thing, though: With its synth-heavy shimmer and New Wave underpinnings, “Fuss” didn’t sound like it came from these parts — it didn’t even really sound like it came from this country.

Plenty of locals knew The Killers were from here back then and embraced them for it. But if you were from, say, Des Moines, Iowa, and heard “Mr. Brightside” on the radio, you could be forgiven for thinking The Killers hailed from London, not Las Vegas.

“We were being called things like, ‘The best British band to ever come from America,’ ” frontman Brandon Flowers says. “I had never heard the word ‘anglophile’ until I was called one.”

All this was very much on the band’s mind as they headed into the Studio at the Palms in February 2006 to record their crucial sophomore album, “Sam’s Town,” joined by two of music’s most critically and commercially renowned producers, Alan Moulder and Flood, whose combined resume includes overseeing celebrated albums by U2, Nine Inch Nails, Depeche Mode, Smashing Pumpkins and dozens more.

“Sam’s Town” was the first record The Killers made in Vegas — “Hot Fuss” was recorded mostly in L.A — and it was meant to sound like it, evoking the wide-open spaces and broad horizons of the desert that surrounds their hometown, the grit and the glamour intertwined in the city’s DNA, its songs populated with dreams and dopers, the hopeful and the hopeless, just like Vegas itself.

You could argue that it’s the most significant record in the career of Vegas’ most significant band, and as it turns 10 this month, the band will commemorate the occasion with a pair of special small hall shows at Sam’s Town on Friday and Saturday, the proceeds from which will be donated to a pair of local charities.

Among those in attendance will be Moulder, who recalls the thought process as The Killers headed into the studio to track “Sam’s Town.”

“It was a conscious effort to sound more American as opposed to British,” Moulder explains, “more like where they came from.”

Adds Flood: “From the beginning, they said they wanted to shift into a different feel. It was like jumping on a train that was already moving. It seemed like a natural progression, because they wanted to be a bit more rock-y, feel a bit more live, but still not lose any of the pop and the melodies and the sophistication.”

There was a lot riding on “Sam’s Town”: A band’s second record is arguably the most crucial, especially after it follows a hit debut. If a group sticks too closely to the sound of the first record on its sophomore outing, it risks pigeonholing itself. On the flip side, too much experimentation could alienate the fans already on board.

“The sophomore album is always the hardest one to do,” Flood says. “It’s usually the defining record for most bands, because with the first album, the band could have been making that for 10 years. But when you come to the second album, you’re part of the dreaded cycle: six months to write the record, three months to record it, and off you go, around the world again.”

The Killers were very much embroiled in this cycle at the time.

“When we were finishing up in Vegas recording, we had to start late one day because they were planning the tour after the album,” Moulder recalls. “As we walked in to the studio, we saw a blackboard with their next two years written down. As soon as I saw it, I felt exhausted.”

Equally exhausting was the making of the record, which spanned from February, when tracking began, through June, when the final mix was completed.

“Sam’s Town” was the first big album to be tracked at the Studio, which had opened just two months before The Killers started recording there.

“It was very serious,” says Zoe Thrall, the studio manager at the facility, remembering the atmosphere during the recording sessions. “They worked long hours. They had an incredible work ethic. Obviously, the record was incredibly important to their career. They knew they had to hit this one out of the park, which they did. ”

The Killers had spent much of the previous two years on the road, and they wanted to make an album that captured the more visceral, bombastic side of the band that manifests itself when they hit the stage.

“We played a couple hundred shows for ‘Hot Fuss,’ and by the end of it, we were pretty well seasoned, we were confident,” Flowers says. “We really felt we had to have a little more of an edge than was captured on the first record.”

Half the record was written during soundcheck when the band was still touring “Hot Fuss”; the other half was penned immediately after the band returned to Vegas.

“We started writing before the jetlag wore off,” drummer Ronnie Vannucci Jr. recalls. “We got right into it. I think when we hit home turf, the music just kind of came out, especially lyrically.”

The vibe in the studio was productive, albeit occasionally heated, Flood recalls.

“Some days were tense, but most of the time I think we felt like we were a team all on the same path,” Flood says. “There were days where it was a bit … lively.”

“You get that with any album,” Moulder adds.

“Any album that’s any good,” Flood says, completing the thought.

Both Flood and Moulder agree that perhaps the most pivotal moment in the making of the record was when the band nailed “Read My Mind,” a stirring fan favorite that would become the record’s third single.

It was the song the band worked on the most.

“We had the chorus of the song,” Flowers recalls, “and it was leaning pretty heavily on a Simon & Garfunkel melody. Alan, God bless him for it, had the foresight and the courage to stand up to me about that: ‘We’ve gotta to do something different with it.’ I still remember when the concept of ‘Read My Mind’ came, the melody came, the lyrics came and the room just felt different when we were playing it. There was sort of a magical moment when we realized that this was something elevated.”

Recalls Flood: “That was the turning point,” Flood remembers. “It’s like, here we’ve got a complete body of work, we’ve got the right amount of singles, the right amount of album tracks, we’ve got slow, fast, deep, wide.”

“Sam’s Town” was all those things: a hard-driving rock ’n’ roll record meant to be blasted while roaring down the highway, a big-hearted soundtrack for the kind of starry-eyed types that Flowers frequently sings of, a clear attempt at doing for Nevada what Bruce Springsteen did for blue-collar New Jersey.

“I know that I can make it, as long as somebody takes me home,” Flowers sings on the album’s title track, returning home, making it.

Still, Vannucci recalls some initial wariness from the band’s record label regarding the evolution of The Killers’ sound on “Sam’s Town.”

“Everybody was sort of giving us a little bit of the hairy eye because there wasn’t a ‘Mr. Brightside’ or ‘Somebody Told Me,’” he says. “You didn’t have these dance-y tracks. It wasn’t cool at the time.”

Nevertheless “Sam’s Town” would prove to be a global hit and remains the biggest record ever to come from these parts. It’ll be hard to dislodge as perhaps the quintessential Vegas album.

Thrall still recalls hearing the record for the first time.

“I cried,” she says. “I really did. I didn’t know until I heard the final product that they were kind of going for that wall-of-sound approach, kind of Springsteen-y. I think they achieved that. It was a pretty seminal record for them.”

But the initial reaction wasn’t entirely favorable. Though it debuted atop the Billboard album chart, selling over 300,000 copies its first week out and ultimately moving over 4.5 million units worldwide, “Sam’s Town” received but two stars in Rolling Stone and was dismissed as “pretentious stadium rock” by The New York Times.

The harsh words stung Flowers, who infamously pronounced that The Killers had made the best record of the past 20 years in interviews prior to the release of “Sam’s Town.”

“Two stars in Rolling Stone, you know, that’s kind of a, ‘Here you go, Mr. Flowers,’ ” Flowers told the Review-Journal the day “Sam’s Town” came out.

These days, Flowers is more sanguine about the negative feedback “Sam’s Town” initially received from some.

“I was tender then,” he says “I was still young, so I took it heart, some of the extra-harsh reviews. It took me awhile to recover from that. But I’ve got thicker skin now — I’m like a rhino.”

The passing of time has treated “Sam’s Town” well: Album cuts like “When You Were Young,” “Bling (Confessions of a King)” and the aforementioned “Read My Mind” remain staples in The Killers’ live set and in a 2009 Rolling Stone readers poll, it was voted the most underrated album of the decade.

Locally, its influence continues to reverberate.

“It brought so much attention to this town,” says Thrall, the studio manager. “We weren’t known as a music-centric town. We’ve had our share of other bands who’ve emerged from here since. It was a big deal for this city.”

It might not have been, had the band followed the advice of Bono too literally.

In a conversation with Flowers prior to the recording of “Sam’s Town,” the U2 singer advised The Killers to not push things too far on their second record, to keep cranking out “Hot Fuss”-like hits.

“He said, ‘Spare us the interesting second record,’ ” Flowers recalls.

They didn’t really listen to him.

And that’s why so many are still listening to them.

Read more from Jason Bracelin at reviewjournal.com. Contact him at jbracelin@reviewjournal.com and follow @JasonBracelin on Twitter.