A few songs after stepping onto a Toronto stage for the first time in a couple of years — and offering their first new music in five cycles around the sun — Killers’ singer Brandon Flowers addressed Air Canada Centre crowd by quoting the late motorcycle daredevil Evel Knievel.

“Evel Knievel said, ‘People don’t want to see the perfect landing, they come to see the intent,’” Flowers pontificated regarding his hope for the band’s Wonderful Wonderful set. “Tonight, we’re hoping to attempt the perfect landing.”

Whether or not they achieved their lofty aspiration might be up for debate, but for just over two hours on a Friday night before a full house, The Killers — “hailing from the beautiful city of Las Vegas, Nevada,” as Flowers fondly repeated, fed a frenzied audience everything they wanted to hear and probably see.

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The Killers, together and apart

Expanded to a nine-piece band for the tour (“we’re almost Arcade Fire,” Flowers joked) with drummer Ronnie Vannucci Jr. serving as the only other original member on stage — guitarist Dave Keuning and bass player Mark Stoermer are opting out of live performance for the time being — The Killers brought as much “Vegas” with them as they could visually pack into the mix.

There was plenty of neon — a couple of downward pointing arrows and the Venus and Mars glyphs representing male and female — in the constant set props. A miniature water tower marked “Toronto” added to the glitz, as did the Las Vegas pyramid-shaped video screens that boxed the band into a pictorial aquarium of sorts, offering a multitude of images in various configurations — and of course, plenty of close-ups of the band and the dapper, handsome Flowers.

Opening with a somewhat plodding “Wonderful, Wonderful” — shots of the Salt Lake City desert flats giving the song a somewhat ecological spin — the band quickly found their footing with the funky “The Man.”

After shooting confetti over the folks bunched together on the general admission floor in front of the stage, they went for the jugular with one of the best songs in their canon, the irresistible earworm “Somebody Told Me.”

The debonair Flowers, who sporadically played a keyboard hidden behind the “Mars” glyph through the show and played bass on one number, played up his emcee role, cajoling the crowd to overcome their initial shyness and engage in some call-and-response singing as the night progressed.

About 30 minutes into the show, one thing became clear: The Killers are at their peak when they are full-tilt rocking. Songs like “Run For Cover” and “When You Were Young” carry an infectious moment when the band is in full propulsion, driving drum beats and strumming guitars.

It’s the slower stuff that seems to wallow in mediocrity, its nuance perhaps lessened by the fuzzy sound that was never as clear as it was when opening act Alex Cameron (who co-authored five Wonderful Wonderful songs) took to the stage, (at least from my stage-right seat.)

The only time the quieter moments really gelled was during the segue from Day & Age’s “A Dustland Fairytale” into a cover of Dire Straits’ “Romeo and Juliet,” offering some nice, poignant romanticism.

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Otherwise, The Killers ruled when power ruled, the most effective demonstration occurring during a perfect climax of Hot Fuss’ “All These Things That I’ve Done” as the audience belted out the show’s memorable refrain, “I’ve got a soul but I’m not a soldier” just prior to the encore.

But the band’s hometown Vegas tribute wasn’t done yet. For “The Calling,” Flowers re-emerged in a glittery, gold lamé suit and did his best Elvis impressions. And for the grand finale, the crowd — which had been on its feet during the entire show — exploded with the first chords of “Mr. Brightside” and lost it for the remainder of the song, bouncing and bopping with intense fervour.

Correction – January 10, 2018: This article was edited from a previous version that mistakenly said Alex Cameron co-authored five Wonderland Wonderland songs. In fact, as noted correctly earlier in the article, the name of the album is Wonderful Wonderful.