Pressure Machine: Brief Thoughts
Grief, sadness, loss, pain—on Pressure Machine, these emotions swirl with moments of tenderness and beautiful confusion.
The Killers’ seventh album is an elegiac tribute to working class people. It vividly describes complicated, dignified lives amidst scenes of despair and hopelessness. It takes commonplace, even derided struggles, and turns them into songs of beauty, pain, and romance. The lyrics, outwardly simple, carry profound depth.
The standout, by far, is the title track: Pressure Machine. Singer Brandon Flowers hits a remarkable falsetto that seems to capture a quiet, unspoken pain. It’s not a mistake that this song starts out with the words “Hope will set your eyes agleam…” before the first chorus hits you with the quietly devastating:
“I don’t remember the last time, you asked how I was…”
This is an album that examines the deepest questions of the human condition through the lens of working-class people in Flower’s hometown of Nephi, Utah. This album feels less like a continuation of their previous work as it is the band acting as a conduit for Flower’s story of Nephi—and America—to unfold.
Flower’s religiosity pays off, with his clear connection to people of faith, and the way he interweaves Christian themes of dignity amidst suffering into the songs. This illuminates both the lived experience of working class people, many of whom lean on religion, while also giving everyday struggles a kind of gravitas that so much music with ostensibly similar themes fails to achieve.
“I discovered this grief that I hadn’t dealt with,” Flowers said in a press release, “many memories of my time in Nephi are tender. But the ones tied to fear or great sadness were emotionally charged.”
Swirling questions of fate and hushed worries of inadequacy permeate “Another Life,” a deceptively powerful song that deals with that eternal question; what might have been? A small town man mulls over his relationship, asking himself “Am I the man of your desire? Or just a guy from your hometown?” Later in the same song, the bittersweet chorus rings out;
“I passed a couple kids holding hands in the street tonight, they reminded me of us in another life.”
Discussing the single “Runaway Horses” with Apple Music. Brandon Flowers said “Life's going to be hard for whatever choice or whatever road you take. There's going to be obstacles and hurdles…No matter where you go, how far you drift, you’re always trying to get home.”
Steam it on Spotify and Apple Musicusic.
Notable songs:
Pressure Machine
Runaway Horses (with Phoebe Bridgers)
Quiet Town
In Another Life
Note: The album exists in original and abridged versions. The abridged version lacks the intros to the songs, which are documentary-esque clips of residents of Nephi talking about everyday life. While these introductory snippets in some ways distract from the songs, they add an additional realism which only deepens the album.