The Killers - Hot Fuss, Part 2

Where did we leave off? Oh, right, the narrator (who we've chosen to think is a fictional version of lead singer Brandon) was telling us about the aftermath of a fight he had with Jenny. Then I got tired and put him on the backburner like he specifically asked me not to do. Sorry. We'll listen to side b next, but notice that side a is essentially a self-contained cycle, where the conversation in the first song can logically follow the "help me out" of the last song. Instead, we physically flip the album over and meet Andy.

6) Is Andy a new 4th character, or are we (the 3rd character Brandon was already talking to) Andy? Well, we know that Andy is a high school athlete, and the narrator feels like they are the only one who truly loves him, but beyond that everything is up for interpretation. There is no indication that this is the same narrator, but also no indication that we aren't Andy. Logically, then, we should assume that this is all still the same conversation from the first song, and Brandon is still fishing for a sign that this is what we want to know.

7) not really much here, except in the bridge when the dynamic of the abstract love triangles changes. Now he's fine being only with her. We can connect aspects to previous songs if we choose, but the song doesn't actually do that for us.

8) same problem, no actual connection to the story other than the fact that something about the interpersonal relationship is changing.

9) no clue who Natalie is, or how she's supposed to fit into the unfolding story. 

10) finally, rhetorical references to the original situation. 

11) the actual break up, but either this time everything will actually be alright, or else this is irony. That would be weird, we haven't had any actual irony at all. 

So here's the thing. Sure, you can choose to reference the trilogy of songs that tell the story of Jenny's murder, but that creates a huge analytical problem: the work entitled Hot Fuss only contains 2 thirds of a song trilogy, so either the album Hot Fuss requires the missingness of the 3rd song to be understood, or Hot Fuss is essentially a meaningless collection of songs with no real internal logic, i.e. forcing Hot Fuss to be an album is the hot fuss, it's existence as an album being an arbitrary necessity of the music business. I don't like either of those options, especially when the rhetoric of mystery and murder is so closely tied to sex from an artistic perspective. Whatever the intended meaning of the words "Hot Fuss" might be, they describe a particular grammatical situation involving chaos, illogic, tension, and in a sense, unimportance in the larger scheme of things. I think the concept of the album is simply complicated sexual tensions, and the songs themselves are included for their sense of making a big deal about something that isn't really all that complicated or important.

Now some meta-textual considerations. As a listening experience, Hot Fuss the album sounds like a classic Prog structure. In Bottlean terminology, it's not a Self-Titled Debut, it's not a Random Crap album, it's actually a classic Prog album: here's a self contained thing on Side A, and some other things that go along with it on Side B. Why? Well, because side a is extremely precise and well structured, while side b is all over the place and loses any sense of individual, complex characters interacting with each other under a specific set of rules. Andy and Natalie aren't written to fit into the story being told on Side A, and the pronoun "you" no longer refers to us, the person listening to the story being told. That story ended without resolution when we put Mr. Brightside on the backburner.