imploding the mirage

Welcome to the second installment of The Killers week at indoor animal. For the first installment, go here.

The sixth studio album by The Killers , Imploding the Mirage, was released in August of 2020, right in the thick of the pandemic. I was excited to purchase this album and listened to it with much relish. As I wrote about previously, there is often more going on with a song from The Killers than meets the eye, or ear.

A little background: the Mirage is a now defunct casino resort on the Las Vegas Strip. It has never been imploded. So what's Brandon Flowers really talking about?

There's a moment in the second-to-last song on the album, "When the Dreams Run Dry", that Brandon Flowers talk-sings the lyric, "We're all going to die," with glee in his voice. This clued me in to what the band was thinking about, was singing about, and I listened to the album a second time with new ears. Here are some other lyrics that ring a similar bell:

If you could see through the banner of the sun
Into eternity's eyes, like a vision reaching down to you
Would you turn away? - "My Own Soul's Warning"

Sometimes I don't know what to do
It's like I'm screaming in a dream
It's like I can't get through
What if we're not prepared for this?
What if we just can't find the trail? - "Dying Breed"

I felt cast out
I felt eighty-sixed
I felt darkness
But I felt fire in bone
I felt no good
I felt lowdown
And I felt alone
I felt unknown - "Fire In Bone"

Give me the eyes that I may see
The good in my people and the trouble in me
Give me the hands that I may lift
The weight of another who's starting to drift - "Running Towards a Place"

The weight has been lifted
We finally let go
We let go of what holds
Our hearts in the cold
The weight has been lifted - "My God"

And finally:

While you were out there, chewing on fat for probable cause
I let go
While you were out there weighing odds
I was imploding the mirage
While you were out there looking like that
I walked right out of the camouflage
I wasn't locked in no collage
I was imploding the mirage
I was imploding the mirage - "Imploding the Mirage"

He's singing about faith. He's singing about ego death. These were themes and ideas that I was grappling with much in August of 2020 – and the grappling match continues to this day. It struck me that this other creator and his bandmates were asking themselves the same questions I was. And it seemed like they were maturing as artists and as people. This album really spoke to me. And it helps that the music is pretty rad, too.

Below are a few music videos from songs on the album. Film production serves as a great, poignant metaphor for the fakery of the shiny surface of life and for peering through the veil to what's beneath it. Enjoy:

indoor animal is curated by a human: Tim Papciak. On Mondays, he shares one link to one music video to help spark creativity in himself and in other creative types. On Thursdays, he recommends a book, movie, show, art piece, or link to some dusty corner of the internet that he believes either 1.) adds to the human experience, or 2.) serves as a coping mechanism in the year 2025. Note: this is not, and never will be, self-help content.