Also the comment about Balcony Lights made me pine briefly for days gone by.

I’ve always disliked the tendency of lazy critics to marry sense-of-place to a band’s sonic output. The Killers don’t sound any more like Las Vegas than R.E.M. do Athens. We’re also home to Panic at the Disco (an association some are maybe less proud of but damnit Pretty. Odd was pretty. good, man) and I’d be hard-pressed to find anyone willing to identify pop psychedelia or even their first album’s dance-emo-baroque-bullshit to the “glitz and glamor” Vegas cliche.

Though I can’t say the Killers don’t invite it. They named their second album Sam’s Town for chrissakes. Must’ve made one-sheet writing a breeze.

I mean, the Killers have kind of brought it upon themselves, since their music really does sound like being surrounded by neon in the middle of a desert, but still.

But you’re right … Las Vegas, outside of the Strip, is a pretty non-descript, Southwestern city, full of many neighborhoods filled with tract housing of varying quality, and indistinuishable strip malls. My sense is that kids there are fairly insulated from what goes on, on the Strip. They know it’s there, but it really isn’t accessible to them.

In fact, to point out how much the “real” Las Vegas blands out thing you can only do in Vegas, the huge phenonmeon over the past decade has been the growth of nice “locals’ casinos” which blend traditional casino gambling with upscale fast food, bowling alleys, mall shopping and movie theaters. Just another thing for families to do on a Friday night.

Exactly. My parents bought a house around Las Vegas a couple years ago, and I was excited to take a vacation there and take over their place. Unfortunately, it turned out to be Orange County, without lawns.