, best known, perhaps, for being the frontman of the iconic indie band threw us a curveball earlier in the year when he announced that his latest studio album, ‘Thrasher’ would be Country and Western-leaning. Heavily, Country and Western-inspired, as it turned out. 

Flowers has been touring this record across North America lately and it seems to have been going well. On Flowers’ official social media accounts, he has been sharing snippets of the shows he has been playing and after the last show, which was in Las Vegas, a few photos were posted with the caption: “North America knows what’s up. The UK is fixin’ to find out.” Fighting talk! But he wasn’t wrong.

We were over here eagerly anticipating this show. It was actually hard to predict how the new music would go down with the crowd, but they definitely showed up and Flowers had everyone moving along to his music from the get-go. The energy in the room was really amazing and hearing these songs even made us a little emotional. 

Flowers started the show by giving a brief introduction into why he had changed direction (or so it seemed) with his solo career, but it was more a case of duality where he loved his New Order, for example, as much as he did the Country greats like Willie Nelson. He said: “When I was eight years old, my parents moved us out of Las Vegas to small town Utah. Alfalfa fields, rodeos and dirty Diet Cokes, that’s 30 years before ‘Secret Lives of Mormon WIves’. Back when I was a kid, Mormon wives were just what we called our friends’ moms, and then the truck that my dad was driving, WIllie Nelson, Merle Haggard and Waylon Jennings, whether you liked it or not. 

“I spent a long time being embarrassed by that music. And tonight, I am going to play it to you.”

Nerves? What nerves? The Ivor Novello award-winning songwriter exuded confidence throughout the show and had a lot of energy with an animated style. When the show started, he saluted the audience. During the show, he kepy jumping on the speakers to be as close to the crowd as possible. We almost thought he was going to go for a crowd surf at one point. We wonder if it had crossed his mind. Clearly the years of being a frontman for The Killers have done him good, because he brought this incredible showmanship to the Royal Albert Hall.

The show itself, in terms of the setlist was a mixed bag, with songs from The Killers’ back catalogue thrown in for good measure and songs from his previous solo albums, such as ‘Crossfire’ were performed but – as was to be expected – it was mostly songs from ‘Thrasher’ which were played. We particularly enjoyed ‘Plans’ and ‘Does it ever cross your mind?’ 

He seemed to be in good spirits and joked about needing a breather after two particularly energetic songs were performed back to back. 

There was a more sombre moment when he performed Miss America, which was written from the perspective of his older sister who had three daughters with an “abusive man”. We could have sworn his voice cracked a little when he sang the lyrics about her little brother witnessing the aftermath of an assault. 

Overall, Flowers was in a playful mood and why wouldn’t he be when the show was such a huge success? At one point, he asked the crowd to help him choose the next song. A cover. He named two obscure Country tracks which weren’t met with very much enthusiasm, but then that turned out to be a trick as he launched into Killers’ classic, ‘When You Were Young’. It was a euphoric moment.