The Killers released their second pandemic-era project in August 2021, entitled Pressure Machine. It only takes a couple of songs into the unabridged version to realize it is not a regular album. That, for this reviewer, is a good thing.
I’m neither music critic nor a Killers superfan, but I’ve listened to enough tunes over the years to know Pressure Machine is a unique album. A concept project like Arcade Fire’s Grammy winning The Suburbs, Pressure Machine is a really good one. Perhaps even great.
There are plenty of reviews available for listeners who appreciate the “expert” view. Pitchfork is pretty meh, Rolling Stone only sees Springsteen, Paste rightly observes they “swap extravagance for introspection,” while NME calls it “a fascinating, character-driven record.”
The Vinyl Side
In preparing the album, the band sent a team of reporters to lead singer Brandon Flowers’s hometown of Nephi, Utah, a Book of Mormon-named town about 45 miles south of Provo. In comparison to other small towns, it’s…small—population 6,378. SAA-LUTE!
Of the eleven songs, the unabridged version features interview snippets on nine. The interviewees are residents talking about where they live, what they do, marriage; life in a small town. The connected songs largely reflect the sentiments of the people talking.
Having lived in a number of small towns myself, and having relatives in other small towns, much of 
Pressure Machine rings true: drag racing, staying after marriage, harvesting, hunting, pickup trucks, working at the local factory, tragedy, opioid addictions, and Jesus. The excellent cover art raises the question of whether circumstances cruelly fence life off from faith, keeping its promise just out of reach.
Or is it a metaphor for faith that God works in spite of the barbed wire fences of life?
Several cuts are especially noteworthy. Quiet Town is the most Springsteen-esque. It begins with arresting lyrics recounting two real-life teens killed by a train. Terrible Thing is probably, though not explicitly, about a gay teen contemplating suicide. It features explicitly biblical imagery. Runaway Horses, a beautiful ballad with Flowers and Phoebe Bridgers duetting, should come with a trigger warning for the intro (I mean, dang!). In the Car Outside, a tune about a tempted husband who recognizes his own weakness in a strained marriage while not fully accepting his role in the strain, features my favorite lyrics on the album:
I’m in the car, I just needed to clear my head
She’s in the house with the baby crying on the bed
She’s got this thing where she puts the walls so high
It doesn’t matter how much you love
It doesn’t matter how hard you tryWe got a place with a fence and a little grass
I put this film on the windows, and it looks like chapel glass
But when she turns, it’s like the shadow of the cross don’t cast
No blessing over our lonely life
It’s like waiting for a train to pass, and I don’t know when it’ll pass
And by “you,” of course, he means himself.
Pressure Machine and The Getting By are simple yet beautiful songs about surviving life, if just barely.
And speaking of trains, there are so many references to trains in the unabridged version Pressure Machine makes Johnny Cash look like an aspiring N-gauge operator.
The Spiritual Side
Whether by design, disinterest, or other, the most prominent reviews of Pressure Machine disregard the spiritual dimension of the album. By that I am referring not to deep metaphysical meaning that has to be teased out carefully to find something relatable. I am talking about the stuff laying on the ground.
The titular machine’s pressure comes from trying to live in a way that pleases God, as Flowers’s Mormon theology interprets God. “The Kingdom of God is a pressure machine, every step gotta keep it clean,” he sings invoking the legalism of a performance-based religion, as opposed to Jesus’ promise of an easy yoke and light burden (Matthew 11:28–30). Truthfully, this is a temptation in biblical Christianity as well. He continues,
Sometimes I look at the stars
And think about how small we are
Sweating it out in the pressure machine
Good ‘til the last drop
A chasm exists between Flowers looking at the stars with a reflection reducing humanity to little more than ground coffee while a psalmist with the same thoughts was moved to contemplate the greatness of his Creator and the glory of humanity (Psalm 8).
The young man on the verge of a Terrible Thing seemingly reflects on his Mormon upbringing:
Around here, we all take up our cross and hang on His holy name
But the cards that I was dealt will get you thrown out of the gameI close my eyes and think of the water
Out at the Salt Creek when I was youngWhile her mother fights back proud tears a young cowboy gives the nod
The chute opens, bull draws blood, and the gift is accepted by God
The chute opens, bull draws blood, and the gift is accepted by God
The images are unmistakable: taking up the cross, baptism (possibly), and sacrificial offerings. (I can’t speak for Mormon theology, but historical Christian theology does not look for sacrificial offerings after Jesus.) Not seeing how these relate to the theme of the album, the reviewers miss a major point. It is like going to the NBA All-Star game and raving about the popcorn.
The opening lines of West Hills (and thus the album) reflect either Flowers’s personal experience or that of a townie:
I was born right here in Zion, God’s own son
His Holy Ghost stories and bloodshed never scared me none
While they bowed their heads on Sunday
I cut out through the hedges and fields
Where the light could place its hands on my head
In the west hills
Zion being a clear reference to Mormon theology, as is the reference to the Utahan promised land in The Getting By.
You know I believe in the Son, I ain’t no backslider
But my people were told they’d prosper in this land
Still, I know some who’ve never seen the ocean
Or set one foot on a velvet bed of sand
But they’ve got their treasure laying way up high
Where there might be many mansions
But when I look up, all I see is sky
The promise of prosperity slammed up against the reality of the rural struggle, with the latter preventing his people from making even a trip to the beach, leaves Flowers adrift in doubt.
Perhaps uncommon in most popular music, Pressure Machine addresses extra-marital sexual relationships (specifically adultery), without celebrating it. Adultery is presented as a sin justified by bending “one’s own truth” in Desperate Things (the apparently fictional story of a police officer who gets involved with a domestic abuse victim before murdering her abusive husband). Mentioned above, In The Car Outside shows the temptation to adultery as a conscience-dampening moral dilemma:
I dropped a line to a flickering high school flame
We laughed about all the ways that our lives had changed
She’s up the road, about 35 miles north
Got two little boys in school, just had a real bad divorceAnd in a moment of weakness
I told her if she ever needed a helping hand
I would lend, swear to God
It’s like the part of me that’s screaming not to jump gets lost
In the sound of the train, it’s a lot
In the end, Pressure Machine refuses to wholly venerate the small town. The same people who lean on Jesus are not honest about opioid addictions. The same small town that welcomes everyone found one new kid taped to a flagpole while another contemplates suicide. Dreams of different lives are crushed in inescapable cycles. Marriages falter. Kids die. Hearts break. People work themselves to death. Happiness and hopelessness share a home. Subtly, Flowers weaves his own struggle with faith, which anyone who has been around a small town knows is real.
And, like a train, it’s a lot.
fides quaerens intellectum
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