If David Bowie had an illegitimate bastard and sent it to be raised by Vikings, then this little bastard started a band with a 17 year-old Dungeons and Dragons enthusiast, a coyote, and a disgruntled former member of The Strokes, they might produce an album similar to Sawdust, the newest offspring of The Killers. Sawdust has 18 songs, some of which you may have heard versions of elsewhere, as they do a covers of Joy Division’s “Shadowplay,” and Kenny Rogers and the First Edition’s “Ruby Don’t Take Your Love to Town;” as well as “All the Pretty Faces,” the b-side of “When We Were Young.” What I’m getting at is even if you have not been too impressed with some of their past recordings, the range of sounds and styles in Sawdust make it pretty hard to pigeon-hole it into one genre, so you’re bound to like some of it. I personally liked damn near the whole thing, the songs are all carefully layered with use of both synthesized as well as organic instruments; Brandon Flowers’s vocals, although with arguably close kin to some Euro-rockers of the past, has the ability to make you want to both pick a fight and put on eye-liner (at differing intervals of course); and any album that wasn’t recorded in the late 80’s on which Lou Reed makes an appearance can’t be all bad. So make David Bowie shamefully proud, go and buy this album, or if you’re sick of all those pesky record stores in your home town and want to watch them go out of business, it’s definately worth stealing from the internet.