4/5
Under Pressure.
Raging against the machine with Springsteen like Tom Morello's Nightwatchman, The Killers are back...and it's not even been a year. Next week will be 12 months since Brandon Flowers and his Vegas lights exploded back on the scene, 'Imploding The Mirage'. But after heeding his own souls warning, Flowers spent the rest of the COVID-19 lockdown of 2020 quarantined with the blooming of his brooding for his younger days before the glory, growing up in Utah. Another desert like the city of Sin, but not one built on a runaway American dream. Small-town to the heartland, rather one that rubs the salt of its lake in your wounds and all that jazz. It's enough to dust off a 'Dustland Fairytale' that seems like a 'Day & Age' and rework it with 'The Boss' Bruce himself for a live barroom chat via Zoom from 'Sam's Town' to E Street for the band. And that what The Killers did making a killing. The perfect precursor to this 'Pressure Machine'. Its not a mirage, the Killers really are back a calendar and your change since they imploded with inspiration. And on this introspective influence of isolation that really is three crosses behind barbed wire in black and white. It's a lot to bear, but this band have been through it. They said The Killers were done in 2017 when they lost members like a John Wick death count, but just like that 'Wonderful, Wonderful' album they bet on making you happy again like a train returning to the rails, or a ship back in the harbour. It turns out all the songs hadn't been written. The man came round again and just like the 2012 album that reached for a new decade of definition after the 'Hot Fuss' and its top, first five career spanning singles of the 2000's, this band were always 'Battle Born'.
Seventh heaven for this seal, because not only are The Killers back...they're almost all back as guitarist Dave Keuning returns after his 'Mirage' of an absence last year. Although due to the COVID-19 pandemics problems, the role of Mark Stoermer is significantly reduced. Thank God for Ronnie Vannucci Jr. and that full grown beard. And if you want more acts for this album that you really don't need to listen to abridged, but in full how about some one who is even bigger than The Boss right now? Yeah, I said it. 'The Punisher' Phoebe Bridges for the bones of Flowers Nephi roots. On 'Runaway Horses' singing together, "You traded school for weddings rings and rent/Invitations sent of you and him by a barn out on the edge of town/Small town girl, you put your dreams on ice, never thinking twice/Some you'll surely forget and some that you never will". Cantering on this classic album that also features 'Of Mice and Men' John Steinbeck and Sherwood Anderson at least in lyrical inspiration for their respective, 'The Pastures Of Heaven' and 'Winesburg, Ohio'. Taking it back to the basics of hometown influence for better or worse, the band who recorded a protest video for the 'Land Of The Free' with 'BlackKklansman' director Spike Lee really are increasing their legend with this legacy. From the 'West Hills' born and raised introduction with soundbites from the community on tape as Flowers lays it down, "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." 'Quiet Town' from Sam's finest begins with a telling of a train here that kills someone every two or three years, the pleasant sound of the song juxtaposes the dark tones. "A couple of kids got hit by a Union Pacific train/Carrying sheet metal and household appliances through the pouring rain/They were planning on getting married after graduation/Had a little baby girl, trouble came and shut it down/Things like that ain't supposed to happen," Flowers sings for the American dream derailed of those "hard working people" who didn't make it to the heartland.
Locally, this 'Terrible Thing' continues with "these quicksand streets" over somber acoustics and 'Nebraska' like harmonica taking up the cross, "in my bedroom on the verge of a terrible thing." "Hanging on his Holy name." It's just the cards some are dealt in this life that doesn't hand everyone a fair deal. "A barbed wire town of barbed wire dreams". Not everyone makes it to The Strip with a bag of chips. The story of the troubled child 'Cody' starts a fire. Whilst 'Sleepwalker' wakes up towns like this that feel like both a dead end of hope and a spur for a success. Its just how you look at the "Wildflowers paint the western hills/Or the first autumn whisper mid-September brings/And the glowy excitement that it builds." 'In The Car Outside' waits for you like "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 Another Life' the curse of numbing what could have been with another substance medicates nothing but an addiction that will always itch, as. A brooding Brandon asks, "Is this the life you chose yourself/Or just how it ended up?/Is that the yard you pictured when/You closed your eyes and dreamed/Of children in the grass running through the sprinklers?/Being somebody's wife?/Or were you living in another life?" If you're desperate times make it to 'Desperate Things' with those same measures you'll hear the first song not beginning with a local interviewed with their take on this town, but the story is just as brutal regarding a cop pulling over a girl doing 60 in a 35 with dried blood on her mouth, "laughing it off like lemonade". Domestic violence plaguing households like these with the highway leading to nowhere as the only escape of those who would drive all night just to see that light...at the end of the tunnel. The title-track makes diamonds too in all its shining beauty like "hope will set your eyes a gleam." This whole Utah pressure is a well oiled machine now for a band who are part of the American dream deferred's assembly line. We've all come across hard times these last few. Even the lifestyles of the rich and famous. But 'The Getting By' closer shows you like 'Deadlines and Commitments' this band still has a house you can stay if you lose your way. And there's nothing like the one Brandon Flowers grew up in. Town's like this can kill you, but The Killers show you there's still life in the margins of your story. Keep working on that dream. TIM DAVID HARVEY.
Playlist Picks: 'West Hills', 'Terrible Thing', 'Runaway Horses (Feat. Phoebe Bridgers).'
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