Pressure Machine

With more restrained tempos and a broader, gentler soundscape, the focus shifts to Flowers’s thoughtful lyrics, lovely melodies and grave yet pliant vocals for the most nuanced and heartfelt set of songs that he (with various co-writers and band members) has ever conjured up.

They've created something cinematic, pragmatic, and above all, fantastically like nothing we’ve heard from them before.

Some of the most openly emotional music The Killers have ever created. The unflinching nostalgia of Pressure Machine is strong enough to inspire our own thoughts back to wherever we think of as “home,” and how it remains a part of us even if it’s not the place we would have chosen ourselves.

All of the emotional turmoil that this record holds makes it a thrilling—and kind of frightful—experience from start to finish.

Frontman Brandon Flowers channels his Utah childhood on this lush, uncharacteristically reflective album.

And while, perhaps, this more reflective musing on American life wasn’t quite what we’d come to expect from The Killers, ‘Pressure Machine’ does prove that not all escapism arrives with a hook-laden chorus. This is an album which invites you to dig a little deeper.

This matured focus on concept and mood saves the album from becoming an odd catalog misstep, serving instead as a dignified artistic exercise that rewards the band's bravery by becoming the most heartfelt and poignant statement of their careers.

Pressure Machine, stands as the band’s most sonically restrained effort to date. The hooks are still there, and songs like “Quiet Town” and “In the Car Outside” nod to the group’s early synth-driven sound, but the album’s 11 songs take their sweet time unfurling, luxuriating in subtle details like the swooning strings of the title track.

Pressure Machine is, in totality, a commendable and genuinely surprising big swing, which mostly connects. It’s a project that proves The Killers won’t yet settle for festival-headlining rock legacy status.

They've aged into something more pensive, monumental and vital. The party is over, and we need these empathetic folktales much more than any of us need to dance.

A rich, rewarding experience, this isn’t an album to be understood easily – uneasy listening, it could be their most enlightening record yet.

A deeply satisfying entry into their catalogue. It’s a homecoming of discreet intentions, not the pompous heroes return they’re likely used to – the modesty and subtlety suits them.

This stirring portrait of small town existence in its twilight serves as a necessary metaphor, applicable to many of the major issues currently facing the nation. It is most certainly The Killers’ finest album since Battle Born, and successfully proves The Killers as visionary musicians who shall surely help to define “classic rock” for many generations to come.

The stark, stoic songwriting coursing through Pressure Machine tells a much more layered story however, and by the time that same train can be heard approaching in the album’s final coda, it’s up to the listener to decide whether it’s a harbinger of impending doom or an altogether different way of finding your way out of life in a forgotten town.

The band’s blinkered aspiration to create a classic again produces an album that is enjoyable but hollow. In that way, at least, Pressure Machine is a Killers album just like any other.

Pressure Machine might be just too much of a bummer for folks who long for dishy escape. But the band is remarkably good at knowing just when to make a song go widescreen.

Pressure Machine proves a successful concept album for The Killers. ... The primary weakness of this album, however, relates to its uniform sound, where tracks bleed into each other. Regardless, this is a new evolution for the band who, this far into their career, have taken something of a left turn to create something that is lyrically and thematically captivating.

Pressure Machine is a decent attempt at a concept album of sorts. Some mountainous peaks would take it to the next level; without them it feels as though it could soon, somewhat disappointingly, disappear.