MR. DARKSIDE? Mr. Brightside pushed him off stage.

A neon sign flashed “Welcome” beneath a banner that read “Sam’s Town” as a suit-and-tied Brandon Flowers led the rest of his Killers on stage at the Orpheum last Thursday night while Eastern European–tinged carnivalesque music boomed from the PA. And so began the Killers’ half-hearted attempt to redefine themselves as something more than just a trend-jumping neo-new-wave band — the “Mr. Brightside” band, as most radio listeners knew them back in the summer of 2004. Flowers’s synth lines quickly gave way to the U2-like mix of Marke Stoermer’s heavy, steady bass line, some explosive drumming courtesy of Ronnnie Vannucci, and David Keuning’s giant, ringing guitar chords. The three young girls standing in the row in front of me bopped up and down, early evidence that the more somber tone of Sam’s Town (Island) has yet to alienate the tweeny boppers who latched onto the multi-platinum Hot Fuss two years ago. “Nobody ever had a dream ’round here/But I don’t really mind that it’s starting to get to me,” Flowers intoned as “Sam’s Town” rose to a climactic finish and the cheers began — cheers high-pitched enough to suggest that there were more than a few young ones hidden among the applauding adults in the crowd. And they all sang along as Flowers sat at the cheap lounge piano and fingered the chords of Sam’s Town’s second tune, the short “Enterlude”: “We hope you enjoy your stay . . . ”

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