Song Exploder - The Killers - Rut

Episode Date: October 6, 2017

The Killers formed in Las Vegas in 2001. Since then, they’ve released five records. Their newest album, Wonderful Wonderful, came out in September 2017. In this episode, singer Brandon Flowers and drummer Ronnie Vannucci break down the song "Rut" from that album. songexploder.net/the-killers

You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs, and piece by piece tell the story of how they were made. I'm Rishi Kesh Hirwe. This episode contains explicit language. The Killers formed in Las Vegas, Nevada in 2001. Since then, they've released five records. Their newest album, Wonderful Wonderful, came out in September 2017. In this episode, singer Brandon Flowers and drummer Ronnie Vanucci

break down the song Rutt from that album. But the story of this killer song began when Brandon Flowers was on tour on his own. with a solo album. But don't you just in... My name is Brandon Flowers. I'm the singer for The Killers. I made a solo record 2014. It's called Desired Effect.

And when we were going around, I had this idea to have a song that wasn't on the record that was like an introduction to the show. It was based on this ascending chord progression. I would just talk about little pieces that I was familiar with, which each city... I'm howling down lakes you're dry And it was kind of like breaking the ice with the crowd

And so in the middle of us searching for where we're going For this killer's record I just started messing around with that on the piano And wrote another song over it And that ended up becoming rut We got an upright in the family room for my kids And I found myself writing on that It never stops

that progression. It gets knocked back down to that C-sharp every round, and it just keeps going on the same cycle through the whole song. I want to brought it in to the band. I just played the progression. And this one, we got to a pretty good point the first day that we went in and recorded. We had that bass, we could call it, motif

that steadily through the entire song. But the chords are changing and doing a completely different thing. I play that. And that bass, that was how we discovered that it wasn't a normal time. I just played the steady thing. When the next verse started, I was in the middle of that phrase. And we realized that it didn't match up.

It's not in 4-4. And that is totally weird for me. I didn't know until we played it with Ronnie. Ronnie is more sophisticated with this stuff than I am. And he pointed it out what was going on. I'm Ronnie Vanucci. I play drums in The Killers. One bar is a bar of six, so there's an extra two beats.

And he didn't know he was doing it. He was just riffing at the time. It was just a natural thing that happened. So I said, you know you're putting extra two beats, getting a little jazzy, getting a little proggy finally. And then he had to adapt his drums to fit accordingly to what was happening with the time. We were trying different synths and things like that and trying to like put these loops in. We started with that loop.

We just put that in there as sort of a click to play to. because whenever I get to play with something other than just a straight beeping sound, something a little more musical is a lot more fun to play with. I think you move differently when you hear accents and I think you're able to be a little bit more musical. That's Ron.

That's you in the drum set, I think. I'm just always trying to get my voice in there. Drums are such a physical instrument. Everything is moving. And sometimes it takes a bit of vocal to like get in that place of like, let's get it on, motherfuckers. Let's make it happen. And sometimes it requires a shout.

On our more lively songs, if you just listen to the drums, you can hear him. He makes strange noises. Hmm. I'm like saying it long and it sucks. I went to college for music and every Monday we'd have rep class showing the entire percussion studio what you're working on. I remember I was working on a snare drum piece, and one of the grad students, he says, a dude, you have any idea what you're doing with your voice

when you're playing your snare drum? I was so embarrassed. You probably weren't aware of it. I did not know. I was, like, making these sounds. I was in the music. And he goes, yeah, you might want to look at that when you're playing with an 85 piece orchestra.

Nobody wants to hear your voice. I was like, okay, I'm sorry. But fuck him. I'm still doing it, aren't you? Dave Cooning, that's him on guitar there. Dave is a real big Michael Jackson fan, and that part always just reminds me of some man in the mirror shit or something. That guitar also served as sort of an adjunct percussion instrument as well

to sort of add a bit of movement. Right after the first chorus, you suggested that Dave tried like a Lindsay Buckingham-style guitar. I had no idea Dave even knew how to do that so well, So it kind of surprised us that came out of him like that. I was really struggling to figure out what to write about on this record. I guess I'd writer's block. And one of the things that I've been pretty protective of in my writing is my family, my wife, and my kids.

And I think that's partially because I'm protective of them, and then the other side of it is I've never been really that personal in songs. But there were a lot of things going on. I was in the process of moving from Las Vegas, which I never thought I was going to do. But I had to. My wife has to get out of Las Vegas. She has a completely different experience with the city and the streets than I did. And so places where I may have nostalgia, where I consider to be a part of me and things like that, she has awful memories.

And so it's just time for her to leave. Without getting to, you know, I can't really directly explain her in all of her experiences without slinging a lot of mud. But she's basically been traumatized by her childhood and has a pretty severe case of PTSD. And so I had, of course, okayed it with her, but that ended up being a big part of this record. And so the song is from my wife's point of view And it's from her perspective And it's about resilience So she's singing to me

I've done my best to fill them But the cracks are starting to spread It's almost like this submission It's her accepting that it's like this is happening I'm facing this thing She's always known You know obviously she's familiar with her childhood But it wasn't until

she was in her early 30s that this condition or that everything really manifested itself and reared its ugly head. I've done my best defending, but the punches are starting to land. This is her accepting it instead of, for her whole life, she's been avoiding it like it didn't even exist almost. And this is her, you know, submitting to it and realizing that by that, she knows she's going to have. to put in a lot of work. And that's another line in the beginning of the second verse. You can't keep pretending this next stop isn't mine. The truth is on the table.

Someone's got a sign. This is happening now. I'm going into this territory, but I promise that I'm going to keep climbing. Just don't leave me. It's my voice put Jack and I I've altered it. Jack Knife Lee, born Garrett Lee from Ireland, is a producer and multi-instrumentalist, guy that we chose to do a wonderful, wonderful with. He knew what the content was and turned it into a female sound from my voice.

It gives it a femininity right off of the bat, and I think that that is a great introduction for the song. This is a really unique shape of a song. It doesn't sort of follow it your traditional arc. There's two basic ways you can think about writing pop songs is sort of the emotional arc. And then sort of your textbooks, okay, eight bars here, 16 bars here, outro, intro, that type of thing. We sort of abandoned all that and just went purely with the emotional instinct of the song. That was the other thing that Jack and I made us feel more confident in. We're in touch with the emotional part, but I think he made us realize that it's okay to have a weirdly shaped song, as long as the emotional part got there.

Coming out of the bridge, instead of going to the third chorus, we introduced this chant, this mantra of, I'll Climb. Some are me, and then we had three or four singers from Vegas came in and did some singing too on this one. And then from that, instead of going to a chorus, we bring in a whole new take on the chorus with these gang vocals, and it just keeps growing. The feeling, the truth,

trajectory of that emotional arc was going higher than we sort of anticipated. And the music needed to match that, need to be as heavy, if you will, as that emotional point of the song, especially with the voices at the end. You need something to compliment that. So I overdub that TomTom motif just to kind of thicken it up. There's some big, really heavy guitars at the end, too. What does your wife think of the song? She likes it. You know, she feels a little maybe bear a little bit embarrassed maybe, you know, when being around everybody, and she knows that we've had these conversations about her. But she's handling it well, and it's the first time I'd ever sit down at the piano with her

and play her the song and run lines by her and make sure this made sense. It helped me understand what she was going through more and be much more compassionate. Because we're both sort of going through this thing together. If I don't give up, she's not going to either. Now here's Rut by The Killers in its entirety. Visit songexplotor.net for a link to buy this song and to learn more about the killers. I have a new album of my own coming out on April 24th. It's been about 15 years since I last put out a full length,

and this is the first one that'll be out under my own name, Rishi Kesh Her Way. I started making Song Exploder when I was feeling lost in my own music career. And then for over a decade, I've gotten to have these incredible conversations about the process of making music, talking to other artists, and it made me completely rethink my relationship to music and my way of writing songs. And this album is the product of all of that. It features contributions from some of my favorite artists, including some folks that you may have heard on this podcast, like Iron and Wine, Kevin Morby, Vagabon, Fenlily, and the producer Phil Wine Rope. I'm going to be on tour playing in cities across the U.S. starting in April, and I'm trying

to bring the spirit of the podcast with me. So every show that I'm playing will be begin with a conversation about the album with a different amazing guest moderator in each city. Like Adam Scott, Samin Nasrat, Jason Manzuchas, Josh Molina, Minjin Lee, Ken Jennings, John Roderick, Austin Cleon, and more. They're all going to be my conversation partners on stage. And then I'll play with my band. The album is called In the Last Hour of Light, and the first couple songs are out now. You can listen to the music and get tickets for the shows on my website, Rishi-Cash.co. Or just go to songexploder.net slash live.

That's songexploder.net slash live. Thanks. If you love Song Exploder, please leave a review or a rating over at iTunes.com slash songexploder. You can also get a Song Exploder t-shirt at songexploder.net slash merch. Song Exploder is produced by me, along with Christian Coons, with help from intern Olivia Wood. Song Exploder is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a curated network of extraordinary cutting-edge podcasts made possible by the knight foundation and listeners like you

learn more at radiotopia.fm you can find the show on twitter facebook and instagram at song exploder you can find all the past and future episodes of the show at songexploader.net or wherever you download podcasts my name is rishi kesh your way thanks for listening