Pressure Machine (album)

## ***Pressure Machine***

***Pressure Machine*** is the seventh studio album by The Killers, released on August 13, 2021, by Island Records. The album features the return of guitarist Dave Keuning to the studio with the band, after his absence on the previous album *Imploding the Mirage*, while bassist Mark Stoermer was absent due to difficulties caused by the COVID-19 pandemic during recording. The deluxe edition was released on March 25, 2022, which contains reimagined versions of select songs.

*Pressure Machine* is a concept record about life in Nephi, Utah, where Brandon Flowers grew up in his formative years (ages 10-16). With multiple narratives, it addresses poverty, opioid addiction, homophobia, domestic abuse, and suicidal ideation. The album's cover image was photographed by Wes Johnson, shot on the highway close to Nephi. For the title, Flowers mentioned, "That came really early on. I was thinking about American pressure and the American dream, that pressure to succeed and deliver, the pressure to win, how everything is compounded by religious pressure. It feels like a machine."

## Synopsis

When The Killers couldn't tour their 2020 album *Imploding the Mirage* because of the pandemic, lead singer Brandon Flowers didn't sit around waiting for a chance to get back on the road. Instead, he came up with an idea during quarantine that would eventually become the band's seventh studio album, where he also reunited with founding member Dave Keuning on guitar. For Flowers, the introspection that came from lockdown kept leading him to the town of Nephi, Utah, where he grew up. "There was some trepidation at first," he tells Apple Music. "Because it's such a small town, and you wonder how that's going to resonate with people all over the world. And it's such a specific place in the Southwest. But then I couldn't escape it. Every time I went to the keyboard, these ideas kept coming out, all based on characters that I grew up observing, or experiences that I had in town, or memories. So I went with it."

*Pressure Machine* is unlike anything in The Killers' repertoire. From the use of instruments like harmonica and fiddle to the deeply personal storytelling and interviews with people who still live in the town, the album is a love letter to the places you grew up and the people you left behind—anchored in melancholy and dotted with hope. "Tragedy and religious disenchantment were the launchpads," Flowers explains. "When you're a kid, you're getting new experiences all the time, so when something shocking or tragic happens, it really resonates. Those experiences are the things I was gravitating towards." Flowers explains more about those experiences and how they influenced each track on *Pressure Machine* below.

## Background

The album was announced on July 19, 2021, the trailer video posted to YouTube, which revealed the official release date at the end. Another video clip was teased over social media on July 26th, which showed the city life in Utah. In contrast to their previous LPs, there were no singles released beforehand, Flowers explaining that they "didn't want to let one song do all the talking for this record." He added in another interview, "We felt really strong about this album. It has a certain determination and world to it and we wanted it to be experienced in that way so in that sense it's really really different compared to your typical Killers roll out."

Drummer Ronnie Vannucci Jr. said in a press statement, "We were discussing [Brandon] moving to Nephi as a kid and being stuck in the middle of nowhere." Brandon Flowers added, "I discovered this grief that I hadn't dealt with, many memories of my time in Nephi are tender. But the ones tied to fear or great sadness were emotionally charged. I've got more understanding now than when we started the band, and hopefully I was able to do justice to these stories and these lives in this little town that I grew up in."

The lyrics were written before the music, being completely new tracks that have no relation to their previous records. The concept was developed when Flowers moved back to Utah, which struck memories that turned into observations and characters. With Keuning making a return, Flowers said, "He came around whenever he could. It was difficult to get all of us in the room together because of COVID. Mark was very reluctant because he really didn't want to get sick and so he opted out of this record. Dave made time whenever he could and he started a few of the songs on this record. Mostly it was me and Ronnie (Vanucci, drums) and our producers, Jonathan and Shawn." In early 2020, the band gathered with producers Jonathan Rado and Shawn Everett in a studio in Cotati, California. Regarding some of the characters in the record, Flowers elaborated, "These are people that I knew. So about four or five of the characters are actual people that I grew up with. But then I also step into the boots of a murderous cop at some point, on "Desperate Things." But the wonderful thing that anchors the album is it's all in this place that I'm very familiar with. And it's in the shadow of this mountain, Mount Nebo. And I know the canyons and the roads and the places people go to make out, and the places where people get their hamburgers."

For the voice recordings in the unabridged version, Ronnie Vannucci Jr. explained, "Those were townspeople—people from Nephi, Utah. We were at the end of the record, mixing the record, and we were talking about how this was sort of like an audio documentary. It kind of felt like an exposure to this town that wouldn't otherwise be exposed at all or talked about, especially in song. But because it was either a lot agreed upon, or total firsthand knowledge, these stories were coming to life. [Producer] Shawn [Everett] was asking us, on his way over—he was listening to NPR's *This American Life*, and there's a program where they put up a set recorder in a diner and just let it go, and recorded really interesting conversations on what was happening—[he was saying] that it'd be really cool to have, to somehow get recordings of the people in the town of Nephi."

Flowers told *Rolling Stone*, "When I was writing these songs, I was thinking of things like Sherwood Anderson's book *Winesburg, Ohio* or that book *Pastures of Heaven* [by John Steinbeck] where's it's all these short stories that take place in this one setting. For some reason, I had the audacity to try it myself. Once I realized they were going to take place here and they were going to be true stories, everything just really fell in our laps."

When asked if the process of building the record was healing, Flowers spoke, "I think so. I was in eighth grade, some seniors at the high school got killed by a train, and I only had small encounters with each of them. But here I am, 25 years later, and I still get really emotional thinking about that time and what it did to the town. It was just an end of innocence. It's such a cliché thing to say, but it was real. I felt like it opened the door for these other sad things that happened in the town with opioids. I saw that as like this beginning point. It can definitely be a healing thing. To explore those things, work through those things, and see where you're at."

## Composition

In a review of the band's album, Flowers stated:

> "I really enjoyed writing this record, more than maybe any other record. Lyrically, I got to a new place. I had all these fully complete songs before we went in to record. I never have that. Usually, I'm scrambling to make something rhyme at the end of a session. I definitely credit something like Steinbeck's *Pastures Of Heaven*, which has become one of my favorite books, where everything is set in the same valley. It was like, "Can we do that with an album?"
>
>
> [...]
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> "We made deliberate decisions on what instrumentation and what forms of recording we were going to use, what mics we were going to use. We're not going to use plug-ins, we're going to get the real Echoplex. That kind of stuff, you hear it. It made it a lot of fun in the studio, having those kind of limitations, and being able to stay out of the computer forced us to make a more authentic-sounding thing.
>
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> "You hear it a lot on a song like "Terrible Thing," which is a little bit of a tip of the hat to Nebraska. We bought the Tascam. “Terrible Thing” is recorded on the Tascam. The actual Tascam is in the Hall of Fame, so you can't get that one, but we found the model. I typically sing on a 58, and he recorded all that on 57. It's just a 57 on me and then a 57 on Rado, and it's just one take. We were pretty hardcore about it. That's the one little nod to The Boss for sure on the record.
>
>
> [...]
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> "It just had been nagging at me, to write about Nephi. I still have a sister there, so you hear little pieces of mostly sad news. Once I started going back there, I started to uncover these really emotional feelings that I had for the place, and most of them were tied to shocking events or really sad events. I just wanted to explore it and do some justice to the time that I spent there.
>
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> "Shawn Everett, our producer, was talking about an episode of This American Life where somebody just sat in a diner and interviewed anybody that would talk to them at a diner somewhere in the middle of America. He was like, "What if we just interviewed people in Nephi, Utah?" We were already mastering the record, so it was so last-minute, but this guy from NPR went down for a few hours to Nephi and sent us these snippets. We were just trying to find the right homes for them all. It was so last-minute that I was scared about it, whether it was the right decision or not. Now, I've listened to this album more than I've listened to any Killers album, and I credit that to looking forward to those interstitial moments of these people talking.
>
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> "What was wild was how much of the content that I was singing about they would later reference in the interviews. They would talk about the West Hills. They would talk about the mouth of the canyon. And it was the way that they would talk about it, like "Where do your kids ride their dirt bikes?" "Oh, out in the West Hills" It was a little bit of vindication, I think, for me to show everybody that I wasn't bullshitting with these songs. I'm really surprised at how much I remembered and observed from such a short amount of time in the town, but it really left a mark on me."
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## Track listing

All tracks are written by Brandon Flowers and Jonathan Rado, except where noted.

## Personnel

**The Killers**

* Brandon Flowers – vocals (all tracks), synthesizer (1–5, 7–8, 10), piano (1, 9)
* Ronnie Vannucci Jr. – drums (1–2, 4–5, 7–10), guitar (4)
* Dave Keuning – guitar (1, 4–8, 10), pedal steel guitar (6)

**Additional musicians**

* Gabriel Cabezas – cello (1, 6, 10–11)
* Sara Watkins – fiddle (1, 4, 10), violin (8)
* Joe Pug – harmonica (1–3), guitar (6)
* Rob Moose – strings (1, 6, 10–11)
* Jonathan Rado – synthesizer (1–2, 4–5, 7–8, 10–11), piano (2, 4–6), bass (2, 4–5, 7–8, 10), guitar (1–9, 11), harmonica (3), mandolin (4–5), organ (4, 6)
* Anjolee Williams – background vocals (2)
* Charles "ChuckHeat" Henderson-McCrary – background vocals (2)
* Nate Walcott – trumpet (4)
* Matthew Davidson – pedal steel guitar (5–6, 10)
* Griffin Goldsmith – background vocals (11)
* Taylor Goldsmith – background vocals (11)

**Technical**

* Jonathan Rado – producer (all tracks), recording engineer (5, 10)
* Shawn Everett – producer, mixer, recording engineer
* Chris Allgood – mastering engineer
* Emily Lazar – mastering engineer
* Jed Jones – recording engineer (1–2, 4–5, 7–9)
* Matt Breunig – recording engineer (1–2, 4, 7, 9)
* Will Maclellan – recording engineer (1–8, 10–11)
* Alec Eitram – recording engineer (2, 4, 8, 11)
* Raoul Ahmad – recording engineer (2, 4, 8, 11)
* Robert Root – recording engineer (4, 10)
* Rias Reed – recording engineer (5, 8, 10)

## References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 ""It's a bold album and not something you expect from The Killers..." - Brandon Flowers talk working fast on new LP, Pressure Machine". *HMV"'. August 12, 2021.*
2. ↑ "The Killers – Pressure Machine Trailer 1". *YouTube*. July 19, 2021.
3. ↑ Lavin, Will (July 26, 2021). "The Killers share teaser clip for new album 'Pressure Machine'". *NME*.
4. ↑ Daly, Rhian (September 24, 2021). "Small Town Boy: The Killers".
5. ↑ Kerwick, Sean (August 19, 2021). "Brandon Flowers tells Sean Kerwick how his return to Utah was pivotal to the DNA of The Killers' seventh album Pressure Machine.". *The Line of Best Fit*.
6. ↑ Ackroyd, Stephen (July 19, 2021). "The Killers are dropping their new album ‘Pressure Machine' this August". *Dork*.
7. ↑ Greene, Andy (August 3, 2021). "The Killers Couldn't Tour Last Year. So They Wrote an Ambitious New Concept Album". *Rolling Stone*.
8. ↑ Ginsberg, Gab (August 10, 2021). "The Killers on Collaborating with Bruce Springsteen and Creating an Album Over the Pandemic: “We [Had to Actively Pull the Plug”"]. *Consequence*.
9. ↑ Campbell, Erica (August 11, 2021). "The Killers on Healing in the Pressure Machine". *Paste*.
10. ↑ Hyden, Steven (August 12, 2021). "Brandon Flowers Reviews Every Album By The Killers". *Uproxx*.