February 24, 2025
379, that's how many CDs I have as of this morning. There is a non-zero chance I will pick up more on my way to work. I was going to talk more about my collection in this post, but the other night, I gave one of my newest additions a spin and I can't stop thinking about it. My last trip to Half-Priced Books I picked up a copy of Imploding the Mirage by the Killers.
They're one of my favorite bands, and I rarely see this album in the wild. It's always one of their first three that I find. It took me long enough to find a copy of Sawdust. I didn't know anything about this one, which is always exciting to me, I like having a proper sonic adventure ahead of me, but that ended up being an understatement. First off, before I ripped it, it was sitting on my desk for probably about a week. I picked it up to admire the cover again since it's just so beautiful. I flipped it over to read the tracklist, to find out they collaberated with freaking Weyes Blood on one of the songs. For some brief context, Weyes Blood is one of my favorite artists ever. She came into my life at a hard time and I fell in love with her voice and her sound. I'll get fully into that later.
I immediately texted an old coworker who got me hooked on the Killers in the first place with my excitement. He said he didn't know I liked her, and that I was definitely going to love this album. I made my decision there, I was going to listen to it right then. I popped it into my drive and ripped it to my computer, moved it over to my MP3 player and listened to it as I went to sleep that night (By the way, that is the best time to listen to a new album) and he was so right. I was immediately hooked.
I love an album that takes inspiration from many places, and this one brings in more than I can count. There's a lot of U2 in there, a little Peter Gabriel, a hint of Joy Division, a dash of Roxy Music, and the lush production of a Pet Shop Boys album, all wrapped up neatly in that Killers sound we know and love. But there's something extra maximalist about this one. It's not as raw as something like Sam's Town, it's shiny and clean and jam packed with backing vocals, string arrangements, and sweeping synthesizers. It's almost impossible to focus on just one thing at once. But it doesn't feel too cluttered or overproduced.
Brandon's voice and his lyrics cut through all the noise, and though I am still working through and deciphering the lyrics, there's a pretty clear concept. It's about change, first and foremost. One helpful Reddit user pointed out that it in Vegas, Brandon's home town, buildings are very frequently demolished through implosion to make way for newer and prettier ones. And this album was written around the time Brandon was moving to Utah, starting a new chapter in his life. This idea of change and rebirth is referenced even in just the titles of the songs ("Dying Breed," "Running Towards a Place"). Still one of my favorite lines, after my second listen to this is the very first line of the entire album:
I tried going against my own soul's warning
But in the end, something just didn't feel right
We've all been there, about to take the next step into something knowing entirely we're not ready for it, or that it's not the right direction. But off we go anyways, because in our hearts we're explorers. We always have to know what's out there, what's next. And when the path is blocked, when the next step is impossibly dangerous, it only makes us want to see what's beyond it more. If that wasn't true, we wouldn't have invented submarines to go to the crushing depths of the ocean, or rockets to take us into the cold airless void of space. We would never have built bridges across rivers, or taken passes across mountains, or built boats to traverse the oceans, but we did because we just had to see what was on the other side. Brandon is doing what he always does here, reaching straight to the heart of the human experience, and summarizing experiences we've repeated for hundreds of years. Even today, I decided to make this blog using Zonelets, which means I'm writing this post completely in HTML instead of using any of the many free blog templates that don't require any coding knowledge. But if I'm not pushing myself and learning something new, I'm not having fun. After all, no knowledge is wasted.
But then I thought I could fly
And when I hit the ground
It made a messed up sound
And it kept on rattling through my days
Cutting up the nights like a goddamn knife
Throughout our entire lives we are exploring. Not continents or planets or ocean floors, but our personal world, and all the people and experiences within it. Sometimes what we learn from our exploration is not what's on the other side, but how not to get there. Icarus' wings burned when he flew too close to the sun. The Babylonians were punished by God for building a tower too tall. And I once thought a movie was a good idea for a first date. We all make mistakes, and frequently we would prefer the fate of Icarus, tumbling to the Earth at terminal velocity, to the embarassment and the sleep deprivation that we actually get. But we should consider ourselves lucky that we get something he didn't: the chance to brush ourselves off, pick up our wings and take another flight.
I have been replaying Jedi: Fallen Order and recently I just passed my favorite scene. Cal gets stuck on the frozen planet of Ilum without his lightsaber, holding a shattered kyber crystal. His droid consoles him with a hologram of an old Jedi master who tells him "failure is not the end, it is a necessary part of the path." He picks himself up and builds a new lightsaber with the split crystal, then escapes the cave and cuts down Imperials on his way back to his ship. His speech always gave me courage, even in times when I felt like there was no way out for me. And this album gets at the same point.
Failure is not the end, it is an opportunity. It is inevitable, so when it comes, use it as a chance to learn, implode the mirage of what you used to be, and become something incredible. In fact, don't even wait. You have the time to read this, so you certainly have the time to clean your desk, or work out, or look for a new job, do anything to improve your life. It can be something small, or it can be something scary. Either way it will make you feel better, or at least you'll walk away with a valuable lesson. And my God, listen to this incredible album. I love music and I enjoy most of what I listen to, but it's rare that a work is this amazing to the point it rewires my brain and completely changes what I was going to write about.