Brandon Flowers of The Killers previews his new solo country album, recorded in Nashville with a stellar cast of studio veterans.

Who knew Brandon Flowers was a good ol’ country boy at heart, channelling his inner cowboy to a soundtrack of fiddles and pedal steel guitar? 

I guess we should have known from the Killers front man’s penchant for rhinestone-studded western wear, Nudie suits and big hats.

Now, after a stellar career as a rock star, he’s gone the whole hog and taken himself from the neon casinos of Vegas to the honky tonks of Nashville to make a solo album.

It turns out country music has always been in his heart, from teenage years, driving the dusty desert highways of Utah with the storytelling songs of Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings on the car radio.

Now in his forties, he has decided to go back to those roots.

“As I’ve gotten older I’ve found my way back to my father’s music – country-western as he called it – and discovered that the stories I carry really feel most at home in the skin of this beautiful American tradition.”

His new solo album, Thrasher, is filled with country-flavoured tunes – honky tonk rockers, sentimental ballads, and all points in between – with lyrics insired by friends and family, filled with the blend of sadness and humour that are the hallmarks of country music. 

The album was recorded in Nashville’s historic RCA Studio A, where Dolly Parton and Waylon Jennings once recorded, as did Merle Haggard and Charley Pride, Nancy Sinatra, The Beach Boys and many more.

Flowers worked with the cream of Music City’s studio musicians, among them Gillian Welchs partner David Rawlings on guitar, Bruce Bouton on pedal steel, and 85-year-old harmonica virtuoso Charlie McCoy, whose CV goes all the way back to Dylan’s seminal quartet of Nashville albums in the Sixties.

There is even a Mexican mariachi band on one number. I’ve yet to hear that one, though I’m looking forward to it. In the meantime, here is the first tune to be dropped, a classic American parable of high hopes and broken dreams set to a  cinematic backing.