The Killers have released an expanded, deluxe edition of their critically-lauded seventh studio album, Pressure Machine, on Island Records.
Featuring newly-realized, reimagined versions of select songs from the album, framing the stories they tell in different sonic colors.
The new tracks on Pressure Machine, like the original album, were co-produced by the band, Shawn Everett, and Jonathan Rado (of Foxygen), all of whom worked together on The Killers’ critically-acclaimed album Imploding The Mirage, released in 2020.
A quieter, character-study-driven album, Pressure Machine made major waves upon its release last summer. The album lives squarely in Nephi, Utah, a close-knit community of 5300 people with no traffic lights, a rubber plant, wheat fields, and the West Hills. Nephi is the place Flowers spent his formative years (10-16), saying “had it not been for advancements in the automotive industry, Nephi in the 90s could have been the 1950s.” The album’s songs are based on the memories and stories of people that impacted him growing up, interspersed with commentary from current Nephi locals about their town.
The resulting record is an aural document of growing up – and living – in the American Southwest, told from a myriad of perspectives. For the first time in his life, Flowers had complete lyrics before a note of music was put to tape. No stranger to inhabiting different characters in songs, on Pressure Machine he steps into the shoes of some of the people whose lives he watched unfold as a teen. The album weaves the threads of Flowers’ signature lyricism throughout his career into a perfect whole culminating in the most elegant album The Killers have ever made. Indeed, Pressure Machine’s stories detail the real life personal battles, overwhelming regrets, local tragedies, and the opioid epidemic that hit Flowers’ hometown, as well as every hometown in America. Flowers sings about the choices people make, for better and for worse, and the consequences of those choices; the ones who were left behind, and the ones that can’t be forgotten.
The Killers will be touring Australia at the end of the year to celebrate both Pressure Machine and Imploding The Mirage, along with their much-loved catalog of global hits. Tickets for these shows are on sale now.