The Killers – Pressure Machine | Album Review
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Editor’s Note: Friday 13th, August 2021, at 1:36 AM Mountain Time, I hit play on Pressure Machine, the then-just-hours-old seventh album from The Killers. I spent the next two hours listening to the record and jotting down my reactions in real-time. What follows is a (slightly) polished version of those thoughts in an exercise I’m calling a “first listen” review.
I’m going to let you guys in on a little secret; Imploding The Mirage just barely missed out on our 2020 Album of the Year list. It was so close to making our top 15, in fact, that you can even see the album cover in the header image for that post. Mirage hit the sweet spot for me in so many ways; it dropped at the peak of an antsy and confined COVID summer, came from a group that I have loved since childhood, represented an artistic return to form, and touched on a genre that doesn’t get enough time in the spotlight. While Imploding the Mirage genuinely feels like a modern Heartland Rock classic, it was just barely edged out by other releases by the time the end of the year rolled around.
When The Killers announced a second, more pensive accompaniment to the soaring open-road indigo of Mirage, we all knew what they were doing. Shortly after the album’s announcement, they released a collab with Bruce Springsteen, and then they unveiled the black and white cross-adorned album cover. The signs were all there, and they weren’t subtle; this is The Killers doing their Nebraska. Lead singer Brandon Flowers even went as far as to explain that, due to the Coronavirus, the release of the Mirage was “the first time in a long time that I was faced with silence, And out of that silence this record began to bloom, full of songs that would have otherwise been too quiet and drowned out by the noise of typical Killers records.” Sounds awfully familiar to me.
It took them a while (and included a few stumbles), but The Killers have finally figured out who they are in this late stage of their career, and that is a Springsteen worship band. That’s fine. I love that. I support that. Sam’s Town is still a classic to this day, and I say lean into your influences. That said, Nebraska is probably my favorite Springsteen record (yeah, I’m one of those guys), so I went into Pressure Machine with my guard up… but I’ll be damned if they didn’t suck me in almost immediately.
The record opens with a menacing Godspeed-esque warble over field recordings of people talking about their lives in some unnamed small town. As you listen to these disembodied voices tell you about living in the same place for decades and marrying someone straight out of high school, your mind immediately begins to flesh out some dusty corner of America. While inspired by Brandon Flowers’ hometown of Nephi, Utah, the band intentionally leaves out any defining characteristics so that the listener can fill in the blanks with similar stories and places they have experienced first-hand. These quotes, along with their dark, murky undertones, construct the feeling of a depressed town where tourists stop only for gas and maybe a meal. A place where businesses have left and technology has abandoned. A place that we have failed.
From here, the band sways into frame with a slightly-out-of-place folk riff. The lyrics walk a fine line, occasionally stumbling over themselves as Flowers weaves a story of a character addicted to “Hillbilly Heroin Pills.” In their best moments, the song’s verses are a beautifully lived-in portrayal of middle America. “West Hills” strikes me much in the same way as Waxahatchee’s “Arkadelphia,” where the depiction comes across as equal parts reserved and revering. It’s the kind of perspective that you can only gain by living in a place like this. Even with one-off lines that occasionally pop up and hit you like a rake, the searing guitar solo that comes in at the climax of the track more than makes up for it.
After the opener, “Quiet Town” begins with another field recording, this time with a more suicidal bent. The sinister nature of this sample is soon undercut by a radiant synth and peppy drum beat. It feels a little disconnected, but within two lines of the song, you get so wrapped up in the narrative that it almost doesn’t matter. There are lyrics that touch on opioids and the small town cliche of people feeling safe enough to not lock their doors. As these trite observations mount, there’s a harmonica solo, because, of course there is. Even though I recognize it as uninspired… I can’t pretend that it doesn’t hit. That’s what’s both impressive and confusing about Pressure Machine; even when things feel predictable or hackneyed, they’re still committed.
Throughout the album, there are flatfooted lyrics like “In this barbed wire town of barbed wire dreams” and questionable similies like “Small town girl, Coca Cola grin, honeysuckle skin.” Still, those examples only stick out like a sore thumb because the vocals are so crystal clear in the mix. There’s no bombast to hide the cornball heartland rock pastiche like there was on Sam’s Town or Imploding the Mirage. These are also more committed character studies than anything the band has ever done before, so maybe it’s just a byproduct of Flowers failing to put himself in the narrator’s shoes properly. Even when individual lines fall flat, the band is committed enough (and my love for Springsteen is great enough) that it all feels worth it. You get the sense that the band is taking lots of big swings, so it still feels admirable even when they miss.
Thanks to the fascinating but intentionally drab quotes found at the start of most songs, the tracks can sometimes start with literally negative energy. Once the band starts up, the songs generally follow the same structure beginning with a campfire smolder and building their way up to a triumphant guitar solo or a passionate chorus. In this sense, it feels like you get the best of both worlds, sometimes tipping more into Darkness on the Edge of Town territory than Nebraska. The 90° desert drive of Mirage has faded, but these tracks thrive in the early morning light at that moment right before the sun comes up.
Despite all of the lyrical cliches, the uninspired emulation, the needless Phoebe Bridgers feature, and the jarring transitions between mood-setting field recordings and instrumentation, I adored Pressure Machine upon first listen. The most critical thing I can say about it is that the record sometimes feels split in two conflicting directions. Nebraska worked because it felt stark the entire time. On Pressure Machine, songs can begin with a dark slice-of-life tale that feels like it’s leading up to a piece as forboding and wretched as “Nebraska,” but instead, we get something like “In The Car Outside,” which sounds like it could have fit in anywhere on the back-half of Mirage.
Interestingly enough, the band also released an Abridged version of Pressure Machine, which cuts out roughly five minutes of running time simply by removing the field recordings and getting straight to the tasty jams. Especially when compared to the nearly identical copy of “Pressure Machine” with no asterisks or parenthesis, it’s hard to view the abridged version as the “definitive” rendition of the album since it feels more like these songs exist solely for radio edits and playlist placements. It’s mainly just disappointing that the samples, the press cycle, the cover, nearly everything implied that these songs were going to be dark and sorrowful. I guess when compared to the rest of The Killers discography they are, but they never quite plumb the same depths as Nebraska.
In retrospect, I think it might be it’s impossible for an artist of The Killers stature (or Springsteen’s, for that matter) to swing a solo acoustic album like Nebraska in 2021. There’s a major label and millions of dollars behind Pressure Machine, so this record can’t be that big of a risk. Even if it’s only one or two songs, something on here still needs to be able to fit in on a stadium tour setlist. This album was never going to be a collection of “State Trooper”-level songs because The Killers don’t have the restraint for that.
They also don’t have the balls to end the record on a crushing one-two-punch like “My Father’s House” into “Reason to Believe.” In the final two tracks of Nebraska, Springsteen offers up possibly one of the saddest songs in his entire catalog, then chases it with a four-minute ray of hope found in the resolute nature of the people depicted throughout the album. This leads to an effect where the listener goes from an extreme low and then experiences an unexpected optimistic uplift that breaks through the entire LP like a holy sunbeam. Instead, The Killers wrap things up with a mildly-uplifting title track followed by a predictable slow-build choral ballad.
But do I need the restraint or the balls? Not necessarily. While occasionally disjointed, these songs still scratch an itch, and it almost doesn’t matter how they do it. I came into Pressure Machine in search of pensive sentiments, folksy slice-of-life stories, and a harmonica or two. I got all that and a little extra fanfare, but I’m not mad about it. We may never get another Nebraska from an artist the size of The Killers, and that makes me a little sad. That doesn’t mean smaller, lesser-known artists aren't creating that type of music, but it sure would have been fun to watch Flowers and company try.
I suppose when you draw (and invite) comparisons to Springsteen, you’re going to get a lot of them. Is it unfair for me to judge this new Killers album by comparing it to one of the greatest heartland folk-rock albums of all time? Of course. Does that mean I can’t enjoy it on its own merits? Not at all.
Pressure Machine takes the winning ingredients of The Killers’ discography and melds them into one singular 50-minute experience that manages to feel unique. This record takes the personable human tales of Sam’s Town weaves those stories together with the production and style that made their last record stick. Unfortunately for The Killers, what made their last record stick was doing an impression of the greatest living American singer-songwriter, so you’re always going to exist in that shadow. On its own, Pressure Machine is a somber middle ground between Sam’s Town and Imploding the Mirage. Only time will tell how often I venture to that dust-covered well.
