When “everything came to this grinding halt” last year, The Killers frontman Brandon Flowers faced “silence” for the first time in a long time. Out of forced lockdowns and deep introspection, the band’s new album, Pressure Machine, out August 13, emerged. “[It is] full of songs that would have otherwise been too quiet and drowned out by the noise of typical Killers records,” Flowers says in a press statement.
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“I discovered this grief that I hadn’t dealt with,” he continues, noting his hometown of Nephi, Utah as the thematic reference point. “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.”
As reported earlier this summer, founding member and guitarist Dave Keuning makes a return to play on the new music (he stepped away from the band in 2017 to pursue solo projects). “It still sounds like The Killers. A lot of these songs were ready to be recorded, and I would come in and play guitar,” he shared. “I did actually come in with a few song ideas that we worked on together and then made the record, so that was fun. It’s different.”
Pressure Machine, produced by Shawn Everett and Foxygen’s Jonathan Rado, comes after last year’s Imploding the Mirage.
The accompanying album trailer hyper-focuses into Nephi, dissecting the small-town sensibility, feeling like an outsider, and what community means. Check it out below.
