Brandon Flowers Swapped Stadium Rock for Nashville — and Isn't Sure Fame Was Worth It

Thrasher is Flowers' third solo record and his first in 11 years, made on a break from the band and recorded in Nashville's RCA Studio A — the room where Dolly Parton cut Jolene and I Will Always Love You. It is a deliberate detour, and one he admits he could not have made in his twenties. Asked whether fame has been worth it, he told the BBC he is not sure any more.

Brandon Flowers and a lifelong country habit

"You know, a lot of guys in my line of business develop drug addictions," he said. "I got a country addiction." It started in childhood and was rekindled when he moved back home and began revisiting his old haunts. The album was cut live with a cast of veterans: pedal steel legend Bruce Bouton, the 85-year-old harmonica player Charlie McCoy and Americana singer-songwriter Margo Price.

"I sang live with them and I think they really appreciated that, because it's a very romantic way of doing it," Flowers said. "It's not something that people do anymore. To actually get that energy down on tape is a different thing." For a singer whose band's records have been built in layers, it is the sort of choice that only makes sense once you have stopped trying to prove anything.

Writing about the things he used to leave out

Flowers once said his "experiences weren't interesting enough" to turn into lyrics. Thrasher is the sound of him changing his mind. He has gone back through his diaries to write about a rural upbringing and years working in Las Vegas casinos. There is a tribute to a brother-in-law who died suddenly several years ago. And on Miss America, he takes aim at the opioid crisis that hit his hometown.

"It's a sad thing, you know? It's basically doctors prescribing people heroin, and it took so many lives unnecessarily," he said, adding that his own graduating class in that small town lost too many people. Prescription painkillers are chemically similar to, but not the same as, heroin.

He has already tested the material in front of an audience, previewing the songs at the Newport Folk Festival with help from singer-songwriter Lucy Dacus — a long way from the stadium circuit where The Killers and 2000s contemporaries like The Strokes are still confirming UK and European tour dates.

Which brings it back to the man in the sequinned jacket. Mr Brightside has trailed Flowers for more than two decades, and The Killers are still a stadium band. Thrasher is what happens when a stadium act stops performing certainty — a record made in a famous old room with old musicians, about a small town he never really left.