Who wouldn't relish the opportunity to empty a chamber or two on a target the size of the Killers? Bed-wetting pastiche merchants who can't even plead British citizenship as an excuse, and who got too much too soon, the band was here for its seemingly bimonthly appearance in Vancouver, a town so badly suckered by these clowns that every time they come back, the venue gets bigger. The joke was on them this time, though, 'cause last Thursday's show was booked into the Pacific Coliseum, that migraine chamber on the East Side designed to dismantle human achievement. The four members of the Killers were certainly not all playing in different keys, but you wouldn't know that if you stood anywhere inside that clanging nexus of interference and echo.

With that monumental disadvantage already on the table—plus the band's troubling proposition that '80s synth-pop deserves a second chance—there didn't seem to be much of a bright side to the performance. Not until the Killers came out and executed a dashing escape, that is; a miracle that was initially signalled by the lethal talents of drummer Ronnie Vannucci. He could barely keep his ass on his stool, pitching his entire body into the tom fills that pinion "Believe Me Natalie", and somehow putting swing into all those unsexy 16ths he has to play. Bassist Mark Stoermer, defining the Killers' premeditated visual hook as much as its musical ones, provided a taut, almost feline counterpoint to the clumsier antics of guitarist David Keuning, who was very possibly releasing a lot of steam for this show, the band's last one after some 18 months of touring. He face-planted off the drum riser during "Glamorous Indie Rock & Roll", and had to be peeled off the stage by a roadie. It was great entertainment. Crybaby frontman Brandon Flowers even came off as rather endearing, waltzing across a stage lit with whites and blues as glacial as the sounds coming out of his Korg. His little hand-fountain dance routine at the end of "Smile Like You Mean It" looked as if he was artistically waving off a bad fart, and he occasionally sounded like Ethel Merman—who could resist that?

After a weird 10-minute intermission, the Killers returned to an array of synthesizers for "Everything Will Be Alright", followed by a magnificent version of David Bowie's "Moonage Daydream", wherein Keuning gave flight to his inner Mick Ronson and Flowers tapped out Del Shannon's "Runaway" as a counter-melody. The glow stick-clutching teenage girls who made up the bulk of the audience had already wet themselves, now the parents and 40-year-old critics did too. The slimness of their one-album catalogue aside ("kind of pathetic", in Flowers's own words), the Killers made a meal of what they've got, and threw in a handful of B-sides. "Under the Gun" was notable for being closer to the reverse-engineered glam of Suede than to Duran Duran.

Openers British Sea Power also put on a riotous show, complete with some equipment carnage and a few rounds of the jogging-on-the-spot routine favoured by "Let's Work"-era Mick Jagger. BSP enjoys the positive attention of beard-stroking Pitchfork.com critics but will probably never come up with anything as viral as "Somebody Told Me" or "All These Things That I've Done". The Killers, therefore, get stuck with dreary old worldwide chart success, and the breathless worship of those glow stick-clutching teenage girls, who might have better taste than we think. In the very best sense, they deserve each other.

Georgia Straight, October 2005