I think my favorite moment on “Pressure Machine” comes towards the end of “Sleepwalker,” the fifth song on the album, where lead singer Brandon Flowers’ voice belts out the chorus and is slowly absorbed by the sounds of strings and pop-synths that surge up from the background before settling back down to allow the song to play itself out.
Not only is it a sonically beautiful moment, but it works well as an analogy for the entirety of “Pressure Machine,” the seventh album from The Killers, a band best known for hits like “Mr. Brightside” or “Somebody Told Me.” “Pressure Machine” is quite a departure from that style of music, almost entirely swapping electric guitars and heavy drum beats for a much more Springsteen-esque folksy-Americana sound. It also as a whole focuses on more personal, raw themes, as the album’s eleven tracks explore the upbringing of lead singer Brandon Flowers in the small town of Nephi, Utah, during some of his more formative childhood years. It’s a town that perfectly fits the mold of small-town America, being a place where, as Flowers describes in the song “Quiet Town,” good people lean on Jesus and still don’t deadbolt their doors when they go to sleep. But it’s also a small town that Flowers watched an opioid problem fester inside of, and as the album progresses, it becomes clear that Flowers sees Nephi and small town America as a sort of black hole that sucks people with dreams in slowly and with subtlety.
“Pressure Machine” opens strong with “West Hills” and “Quiet Town,” both songs that beautifully mix an Americana sound with some old-fashioned Killers influence, and both songs that help start to paint the picture of Nephi. Aided by the use of recorded interviews of real citizens of Nephi, many songs begin with a snippet of conversation or interviews that tells the real story behind the song that follows it, complete with a dark, droning instrumentation that creates a real sense of dread and sadness that feeds into the music. “West Hills” speaks on the heroin problems that the town faces, and “Quiet Town” contrasts the typical hospitality expected from small town America with accounts of a train that passes through Nephi and kills someone every few years, mostly from the victim’s own intent. “Terrible Thing,” “Another Life,” “In the Car Outside,” and “Runaway Horses” (which features a guest appearance from songwriter Phoebe Bridgers) all tell stories of people of promise stuck in rubber factories or in small homes far away from what they dreamed they would be doing in their futures, and wishing there were ways out. “Desperate Things” and “Cody” tell more visual stories about the lives of people in small town America, hinting on ideas of drunk abusers or secrets in everyday lives. The final two songs, “Pressure Machine” and “The Getting By” aren’t the strongest ending to the album, but suffice to wrap up the world of Nephi into a small but incredibly potent package.
On a more technical perspective, the sound here isn’t anything I would consider new, but boy, does it work. Flowers does a great job at creating a beautifully bittersweet sound through guitar and violin and even a little mandolin, broken up with more fleeting sounds of harmonica and synth that complement Flowers’s voice. Flowers has really figured out how to convey a sense of rawness not only in his lyrics, but in the sound, too.
“Pressure Machine” doesn’t end on a particularly high note. There’s no call to action or exception to the rules of Nephi, and I think that’s okay, because I don’t think that was the point of the album. As in that moment in “Sleepwalker,” it’s a glimpse into a world that sucks people in and drowns them out, and then it ends. And that’s all it needs to be.