Review: The Killers in Berlin

Brandon Flowers refused to smash his pinata, but he did rock Huxley's Neue Welt in Berlin on Saturday. The Killers' singer had a small pinata sitting on his piano and teased the audience with smashing it. Instead, he picked up an electric bass guitar and showed the roaring crowd some of his new Bruce Springsteen-inspired, rockin' stage moves. (I linked to my YouTube videos and Flickr photos in this review to give you a taste of the show.)

The Killers played the futuristic German capital as part of their brief European tour after winning the MTV Video Award for Best Rock act in Copenhagen on Thursday. Huxley's Neu Welt is a small venue, probably packing under a thousand people for this show, most of which were British fans. I love how the Europeans get into live shows. The floor was literally bouncing below my feet and I could tell the band felt the energy from the audience. Flowers was sweating profusely and had to take lengthy breaks between songs to drink extra water.

I have seen the Killers perform a few times in the States and one thing that I noticed immediately was that Flowers has matured quite a bit as a stage performer. During the most recent Hot Fuss tours, the shy singer used to hold on to his keyboard to deal with his stage freight. Now, he is a confident show man following good Las Vegas tradition, performing holding his mic stand, flaunting around the stage and climbing speakers. But regardless of his new confident rock star manners, he is still the gay-ish ringmaster to me with his slightly effeminate stage moves that make The Killers' brand of rock 'n roll so different, fun and appealing.

With Flowers performing more and playing less, there was a temporary fifth band member hidden on the back of the stage who played many of Flowers' keyboard parts.

The band played a flawless (almost predictable) show combining old and new tracks. They opened the show with "Sam's Town," continued with "Enterlude" and went straight into a propulsive version of "When You Were Young."  Other tracks on the setlist included "Jenny Was A Friend Of Mine," "Smile Like You Mean It," "Somebody Told Me," "Mr. Brightside," "Bones," "My List," "For Reasons Unknown" and my favorite "Bling."

The band came back for an encore twice. The first encore featured a killer version of their anthem "All These Things I've Done" and the last encore was a simple performance of "Exitlude" that is also the last track on "Sam's Town."

I enjoyed watching The Killers perform and jumped around with the crowd. It's great to see that the band members (and Flowers in particular) are maturing as performers, Next time, they could make the show a little less formulaic and extend songs or play alternate versions so it doesn't seem like you are purely listening to a live rendition the album.