The Bravery

Since the Bravery and the Killers are the two American groups most likely to be misidentified as British, their 2005 pissing match was wholly predictable but more entertaining than anticipated. Recall that the Killers' Brandon Flowers chided the Bravery's Sam Endicott for having once played in an outfit named Skabba the Hut. The jibe in turn inspired Endicott to call Flowers "a little girl" and a "kid in a wheelchair," for reasons that probably weren't clear then and definitely aren't now. Today, however, the beef's dead, and no wonder, since the Killers have long since surpassed their former sparring partners popularity-wise, in part because of the middling reception that greeted the Bravery's 2007 sophomore effort, The Sun and the Moon. The disc isn't unlistenable, just dull and secondhand, with predictable '80s-tastic grooves running beneath lines such as "You slipped away like a fistful of sand" — just as the Bravery's buzz-band status did. Endicott and pals continue to slug it out on tour, appearing at the Culture Room with Living Things and Dustys. But Flowers is getting the last laugh.