Review: The Killers – Pressure Machine

The Killers’ seventh country-fied album Pressure Machine is about as far as you can get from the bright lights of Vegas

Over the years, the Killers have developed an inseparable link with their hometown of Las Vegas. They’re arguably the most famous rock band from Las Vegas, right up there with Panic! At the Disco. Their sophomore album Sam’s Town is named after a casino, and their fourth album Battle Born takes its name from the Nevada state flag. The band’s singer, Brandon Flowers, named his solo debut Flamingo after a road in Vegas, and its opening track was called “Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas.” Even their new-wave inspired music, with all of its glitz and glam. feels at home amidst the decadence of Sin City.

The Killers’ seventh country-fied album Pressure Machine is about as far as you can get from the bright lights of Vegas, instead focusing on Flowers’ formative years in Nephi, Utah. This shift from the big city to the small town is reflected in every sense of the album, from the minimalist compositions to the replacement of electronic instruments with acoustic ones.

Pressure Machine’s most defining characteristic is its lyrics, which often act as a form of storytelling. They’re so much more developed than anything Flowers has done before that the general consensus about this album seems to be, “wait, he can write good lyrics?” I guess that’s what happens when you score a hit with the chorus of, “are we human, or are we dancer?” The album also includes tape recordings of Nephi’s residents at the beginning of almost every track, a last-minute decision by producer Shawn Everett that gives it a “documentary” feel. The result is that Pressure Machine is very much an album you have to actively listen to with the volume turned up, and not something to provide ambient background music.

Flowers paints an ambivalent picture of Nephi on Pressure Machine. On “Quiet Town,” he contrasts the small-town feel of “good people, they still don’t deadbolt their doors at night” with the darkness of teens getting killed by a train and “opioid stories.” The opioid crisis is a recurring theme on the album, as the opening track “West Hills” juxtaposes a man getting busted for possessing “hillbilly heroin pills” and his impending incarceration, with the image of horses running freely. It’s really top-notch lyricism from Flowers, and immediately establishes the album’s theme. It also shows that Flowers hardly views Nephi through rose-colored glasses, and most of the character sketches on Pressure Machine are presented with a detached objectivity. “Terrible Thing” imagines a closeted teenager contemplating suicide, knowing he doesn’t fit in the conservative town, while “Cody” introduces us to a maladjusted kid who derides the Nephi inhabitants’ religiousness. “Desperate Things” fleshes things out even further, telling the story of a cop who has an affair with a woman with an abusive husband, who the officer eventually murders. These aren’t the most uplifting tales, but by the time the title track rolls around towards the end of Pressure Machine, you’ll at least have a brief respite from all that darkness with some quaint-sounding reminiscence about the nicer parts of Flowers’ childhood.

These lyrics would be a big enough change on their own, but Pressure Machine also introduces a new country and “heartland” sound that fans probably weren’t expecting from the Killers. To start, acoustic guitars dominate here. The band’s guitarist Dave Keuning was absent on last year’s Imploding the Mirage, but his usual soaring riffs seldom appear on the album (though he has a great solo on “Cody”). “West Hills” kicks off the album with somber piano, strings, and mandolin, and Keuning’s electric guitar doesn’t make its climactic entrance until roughly two-thirds of the way through. It even brings in a harmonica towards its end, a tried-and-true folk instrument that dominates the chorus of “Quiet Town” and reappears throughout the album. The trumpet on “Cody” is courtesy of Bright Eyes member Nate Walcott, and the folksy stylings of Pressure Machine certainly bring that group to mind as well. “Runaway Horses” features Phoebe Bridgers on guest vocals, where she and Flowers sing a duet over delicately plucked acoustic guitar and subtle pedal steel guitar. Sam’s Town might have been the Killers’ big pivot back to a Springsteen-inspired “American” sound after the faux-British debut Hot Fuss, but it wasn’t pedal steel guitar and harmonica levels of “American” like Pressure Machine.

The main peculiarity of Pressure Machine is that some of the strongest tracks on the album lack both the new Americana sound and narrative-driven lyrics. “In the Car Outside” has the most memorable melody on the album, bringing the Killers’ trademark synthesizer to the front and delivering a chorus full of howls. It’s a brilliant song, but it sounds like it could have come from any other Killers album, and has some of the simplest lyrics on Pressure Machine. “Sleepwalkers” and “In Another Life” also fit this bill to a lesser degree, sounding much more rock than country and forgoing Nephi-specific, descriptive verses. On the other hand, “Terrible Thing” and “Desperate Things” both tell interesting stories, but their threadbare instrumentation makes listening to both a bit of a slog. Bridging the two worlds, the opening salvo of “West Hills” and “Quiet Town” both nail the balance between attention-grabbing music and scene-setting lyrics.

I’m not sure I’d agree with the Killers’ drummer Ronnie Vannucci Jr. when he said, “the beauty of this album is that it’s about Nephi in Utah, but it could be about any town anywhere.” I didn’t exactly grow up amidst rodeos, horses, and other western themes, and it’s hard to imagine the country sounds of Pressure Machine applied to recollections of an east coast suburb. I’m thankful that Flowers was able to channel his formative years into something so compelling, and the album is indisputably the Killers’ lyrical apex. Whether you’ll put on Pressure Machine instead of something like “Mr. Brightside” or “When You Were Young” is harder to say.

Rating: 6.5/10