'Gotta beat Alabama': The Killers give Austin a cathartic release at Moody Center

It's hard to imagine a concert experience with more cathartic energy bouncing between performer and audience than what the Killers routinely deliver. We last saw it in Austin at the 2017 Austin City Limits Music Festival, which featured the Las Vegas band as its final-night headliner. On Friday, they brought it to the new Moody Center arena for what turned to be one raucous pre-party for Saturday's Texas-Alabama game across the street.

Killers frontman Brandon Flowers let his allegiances be known early on, ad-libbing "Gotta beat Alabama!" into the song "Shot at the Night" during the show's first half-hour. He underscored it at the end of the night, shouting out "We hope you beat Alabama tomorrow!" before departing the stage. An easy play for the hometown crowd, no doubt, but like most anything else the Killers did on Friday, the crowd ate it up.

When Flowers directed fans to clap their hands to the beat at the start of "Smile Like You Mean It," they gave him a packed house of percussion. When he cajoled them to wave their arms back and forth during "Shot at the Night," the arena became a sea of swaying limbs. And when the Killers closed their main set and encore, respectively, with "All These Things That I've Done" and "Mr. Brightside" from their multiplatinum-selling 2004 debut album, the crowd needed no prompting to sing along, loud and proud.

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The Killers had planned a 2020 concert at the Erwin Center, where they'd previously performed in 2007 and 2009, but the pandemic resulted in delays that pushed them to the Moody, which opened in April. Flowers noted early on that the Killers had been coming to Austin for some time; indeed, they played South by Southwest in 2004, a few months before their debut album came out. Along the way, they've also played at Stubb's and Cedar Park's H-E-B Center, plus a surprise Continental Club show in 2017 between ACL Fest weekends. They've also taped the "Austin City Limits" TV show.

This delayed tour was largely tied to the group's 2020 album "Imploding the Mirage," from which they played five songs, including the dramatic tone-setting opener "My Own Soul's Warning." But they spent part of the pandemic working on another album, "Pressure Machine," that came out in 2021. Flowers explained to the crowd that the new album includes "a couple of songs that are basically country songs. You like country in Texas, right?"

The band then launched into "Runaway Horses," which featured backing vocalist Tori Allen on violin and lived up to Flowers' promise that "we're actually pretty good at" country music. It was a rare toning-down of tempo in a night that mostly felt like a two-hour freight train charging through the UT campus.

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The Killers know that 2004's "Hot Fuss" remains not only their best-selling album but a clear fan favorite, so it was no surprise they played five songs from that record. Four more came from 2006's "Sam's Town," with three from 2008's "Day & Age." By comparison, more recent records other than "Imploding the Mirage" were less represented: Just one each from "Pressure Machine" and 2012's "Battle Born," and nothing from 2017's "Wonderful Wonderful" except a passage from "Rut" woven into the moody newer song "Caution." They also played "Boy," released last month as a stand-alone single.

Perhaps the highlight of the show came just before the end of the main set, when Flowers acknowledged an exuberant fan in the front row who'd been holding up a sign that said "Killer drummer ready to play." They decided to give him a shot: Drummer Ronnie Vannucci Jr. gave way to the fan introduced as "Bryan, with a y," who held his own nicely on "For Reasons Unknown" from 2006's "Sam's Town."

During the encore, Flowers brought opening act Johnny Marr onstage, confessing the band's joy over having the celebrated guitarist for 1980s band the Smiths playing 32 dates of their current tour. They've apparently been covering different Smiths songs during the encore on the tour; Flowers claimed this was the first time they'd tried "You Just Haven't Earned It Yet, Baby," but if so, you couldn't tell from how well they played it. Marr stuck around for the inevitable "Mr. Brightside" finale as well.

Marr's own set was impressive enough that you have to respect the Killers for booking him, knowing his performances would be a tall order to follow. Playing with a lean three-piece backing crew, the 58-year-old Englishman mixed newer songs such as 2019's "Armatopia" and last year's "Spirit Power and Soul" with a handful of Smiths classics. When he played that band's iconic "How Soon Is Now" at the end of his 40-minute set, it felt like a rite of passage to hear Marr's signature guitar parts rendered live.

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Marr's performance was clearly value-added to the bill, but a 30-minute opening set from local duo Me Nd Adam seemed a poor fit musically. The songs aren't bad, but they're mostly bland and uninspiring. A cookie-cutter cover of Bruce Springsteen's "Dancing in the Dark" seemed pointless; if you're going to tackle a classic like that, it helps to at least bring something new to the table, as Austin duo Little Mazarn did in a recent cover of the song.

The Killers at Moody Center in Austin setlist

1. "My Own Soul's Warning"

2. "Enterlude"

3. "When You Were Young"

4. "Jenny Was a Friend of Mine"

5. "Smile Like You Mean It"

6. "Shot at the Night"

7. "Running Towards a Place"

8. "Human"

9. "Somebody Told Me"

10. "Fire in Bone"

11. "Boy"

12. "Runaway Horses"

13. "A Dustland Fairytale"

14. "Always on My Mind"

15. "Runaways"

16. "Read My Mind"

17. "Dying Breed"

18. "Caution"

19. "For Reasons Unknown"

20. "All These Things That I've Done"

Encore

21. "Spaceman"

22. "You Just Haven't Earned It Yet, Baby"

23. "Mr. Brightside"

(This review was updated to correct the name of the Killers' current violinist.)

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: The Killers and Johnny Marr give Austin a cathartic concert experience