The Killers’ Brandon Flowers has announced his second solo album since 2010’s Flamingo, will be titled The Desired Effect and will be released on May 18th of this year. The announcement was made on his website with a handwritten note and a clip of a single hand playing piano, the clip being the only taste he’s provided of the new material.
Para The Desired Effect, Flowers is working with Ariel Rechtshaid, Grammy winner of Producer of the Year in 2014 after working with artists such as Haim and Vampire Weekend, and most recently co-writing Madonna’s single “Living for Love.”
“Ariel and I have been collaborating in the studio,” Flowers wrote in the announcement letter, “working twogether [sic] in the spirit of conversation, contention and at long last, sweet contrition.” Last year Flowers spoke in an interview with NME, saying Rechtshaid was taking him out of his comfort zone after they were initially “butting our heads together.”
Despite their upcoming headliner at San Diego’s Kaaboo Festival this September, The Killers have not spoken of new music since their fourth studio album Battle Born in 2012, seemingly in another hiatus as taken two years before. It was during the band’s ‘indefinite hiatus’ that Flowers had released his first solo album Flamingo, utilizing some songs originally written for The Killers.
At the time, he had reassured that neither the hiatus nor his solo album were the beginning to The Killers’ end, with the release of Battle Born following after he expressed hopes for their next album to be “a wonderful collaboration between four guys who are ready to make the best record that they possibly can;”. With such a long time since the last record, fans can only hope that perhaps The Desired Effect will play the same effect in bringing about much anticipated new music from The Killers.
“I wanna keep being in [The Killers]. I don’t think we’ll get too morbid about it, I think we wanna keep going.”
