Sam’s Town, The Killer’s second album, is a startling and almost unrecognisable departure from the cool, synthesiser-heavy, eighties New Wave-influenced sound of their debut Hot Fuss. Apparently, this time around they were mainly influenced by Bruce Springsteen, and you can sort of see the logic – Sam’s Town aims for soulful anthems rooted in the American heartland, that try and say something about the condition of the everyday working man while still getting plenty of rock bombast in for good measure.

But here’s the thing; it really doesn’t sound much like The Boss at all. It does, however, sound a lot like Queen, Meatloaf and – on a couple of bizarre occasions – Kate Bush. And like all of the aforementioned artists, Sam’s Town has no notion whatsoever of excess. It goes wildly over the top, and then goes a bit further over the top, and stays there, like some mad god wanting desperately to be loved by its bewildered subjects.

On first listen, it’s a disastrous mess, with songs so out of control as to be almost unlistenable. Second time around and it’s still preposterous and wildly overblown. And after that, it just gets better and better; assuming, that is, that you don’t try and take it remotely seriously. There are some hideous lyrics, some truly baffling choruses, inexplicable changes of direction mid-song … and also, to be fair, some genuinely touching and endearing moments.

All of its extremes, for good and bad, come together on This River is Wild, which is exactly the kind of song that its title suggests, and is totally unrepentant about it. Brandon Flowers delivers lines like “you better run for the hills before they burn / listen to the sound of the world don’t watch it turn” with such conviction that you almost forget to laugh at him.

Probably The Killers really were trying to emulate Born to Run rather than Bat Out of Hell. But who cares? Because Sam’s Town harks back to a time when rock didn’t have to pretend to be deep, in fact could be downright stupid, and everybody was prepared to look the other way because they were too busy head-banging in their bedrooms. It’s a perfect antidote to miserabilist shit of the Coldplay school. It dares to be fun. And if you choose to view it all as mad genius rather than a Frankenstein’s monster of influences that have no right to be together in one place, it’s bloody amazing stuff.