The beginning of lockdown saw lots of us return to where we grew up. Brandon Flowers similarly had his heart turned towards his hometown of Nephi, Utah, generating anecdotes that make up the delicate songs on The Killers’ most intimate album yet. Less than a year after releasing Imploding the Mirage and the promise of a global stadium tour, the American group experiments with lighter tones and ruthless working-class stories not designed for grand stages. It is a concept album that wouldn’t exist without lockdown and is a welcomed addition to their discography.
What makes it so welcoming is the alluringly specific sense of place, with each song commencing after often dark interview fragments with Nephi locals. Accompanied with Flowers’ prolific storytelling abilities, Pressure Machine’s strongest moments arise during these emotionally charged narratives, ditching the arena rock for plucky country and cutting acoustics. As Springsteen inspired as always, The Killers lean towards impersonating Nebraska rather than Born To Run.
Opener ‘West Hills’ is a standout moment, producing vivid images and unsettling tales of Nephi and its residents through a throbbing R.E.M-esque melody and gorgeously sensitive vocals. The track certainly establishes the haunting but euphoric mood that drives this LP, submerging listeners into this different sonic direction.
The following Nephi interviewee’s words that “every two or three years the train kills somebody” are equally as chilling at the start of ‘Quiet Town.’ Yet for a song brimming with glittery synths, harmonica and chiming keys like a campfire jolly, the themes are contrastingly honest and bloody. This continues with a peculiarly placed early acoustic number about male suicide, where the narrative focusses on a young man “on the verge of a terrible thing” and ‘Desperate Things’ is a piercingly detailed, stretched out stormy tale of a police-officer murdering the husband of a domestic abuse victim who he’s fallen for. Flowers doesn’t shy away from the brutal.
Pressure Machine may lack the killer-edge of its predecessors and a couple of ideas are recycled but other elements of this fresh outlook are up there with the most powerful The Killers have ever crafted. An album at its most rewarding when appreciating this single-less project’s bleakness, The Killers’ unexpected new endeavour to tackle small-town America confirms their perseverance to stay at the top.
Rating: 4/5
