The Killers: Sam's Town

The Peter Principle says that people tend to be promoted to their level of incompetence. The Killers are pop music's most recent victims of the truism. Of course, the band deserves a good chunk of blame for the sea of unreasonable responsibilities it's currently wading in (frontman Brandon Flowers did promise that Hot Fuss' follow-up would be the best album in the past two decades), but fans, critics, and anyone else who's bandied about names like Bono, Bruce, and Bowie alongside Brandon's are equally guilty. Since when is a band that sang, "Well somebody told me / You had a boyfriend / Who looked like a girlfriend / That I had in February of last year" allowed to nominate itself for Most Important Band On The Planet? Has anybody bought into the idea that this could actually happen, or is everyone just letting The Killers build themselves up to make sure the splat on the way down is as loud as possible?