Concert review: The Killers go big and blustery at Xcel Energy Center

When the Killers emerged from Las Vegas with their 2004 debut album “Hot Fuss,” they came off like a cross between Duran Duran and the Smiths.

So it was fitting that when they headlined St. Paul’s Xcel Energy Center on Tuesday night, the opening act was one of their musical heroes, Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr.

Marr was both cheery and a terrific performer. In his too-short set, he played four solo songs (“Spirit Power and Soul” was the best of the bunch), three Smiths songs (“Panic,” “This Charming Man” and an absolutely thrilling “How Soon Is Now”) and “Getting Away with It” from his old band Electronic, a collaboration with New Order’s Bernard Sumner and the Pet Shop Boys. Marr really needs to do a full-out Smiths covers tour, as he has long since proven he can pull off the songs without the increasingly toxic Morrissey.

As for the Killers, they seem to be back at full speed after the ’10s, a decade that saw the band pursuing solo projects and guitarist Dave Keuning and bassist Mark Stoermer taking breaks from recording and touring.

Tuesday’s show was first scheduled for 2020 to promote the Killers’ sixth album, “Imploding the Mirage,” which is somewhat of a return to form after 2012’s “Battle Born” and 2017’s “Wonderful Wonderful.” But when the pandemic put the breaks on touring, the band went ahead and recorded another new album, last year’s “Pressure Machine,” a rather dreary meditation on the youth of vocalist Brandon Flowers.

On top of that, the band just released a new stand-alone single — “Boy,” which landed midway through the set — and Flowers has promised more singles this year and another album in 2023.

The band hasn’t fully reunited, as Stoermer is sitting out this tour. But you wouldn’t know it from looking at the big stage, where the three original Killers were supplemented by four additional musicians and three backup singers.

Really, though, everything was big about the show, which opened with the first of three blasts from confetti cannons. Flowers has never been afraid of overreaching, flamboyant gestures, both onstage and in his songs, and he made plenty of them Tuesday. The set list focused on the group’s many huge anthems, from “When You Were Young” to “Smile Like You Mean It” to “Jenny Was a Friend of Mine.” Even a song like “Cody,” from “Pressure Machine,” sounded impossibly massive in spite of its intimate, personal lyrics.

The more than 10,500 fans on hand ate it all up and started chanting “I got soul, but I’m not a soldier” during the main set’s final number, “All These Things That I’ve Done.” The crowd also cheered after Flowers proclaimed: “This is a superspreader event! We’re spreading peace, we’re spreading love and we’re spreading rock and roll!”

The Killers opened their encore with “Spaceman” and closed it with their career-defining smash “Mr. Brightside.” They also invited Marr back onstage for a run through the Smiths’ “There Is a Light That Never Goes Out” that proved Marr does Morrissey better than Flowers.

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