“It was such a last-minute decision, and I’m really grateful that we did it.” “It became just as important as the instrumentation to have these interstitials and these people speaking and sort of inviting you into this place,” said Flowers. One man talks about spirits in the hills, and a woman recounts a horrific accident to a horse. “The beautiful thing about this record is that it is universal, it does speak to a lot of people.”Īdding to an almost journalistic feel is that threaded throughout the album are recorded snippets of interviews with townsfolk made for the band during a recent one-day stop in Nephi. “I don’t think you have to be or even know about this town to get it,” said Vannucci. While Flowers’ portraits of hopeless dreamers, morally dubious police officers, kids’ feet dangling in the stream, dissatisfied husbands and devoted church-goers is very specific, it can speak to many. The first line of “Quiet Town” begins with “A couple of kids got hit by a Union Pacific train” and later has an image of parents weeping at eulogies: “With their daughters and sons/Laying there lifeless in their suits and gowns/Somebody’s been keepin’ secrets.” The song that emerged - “Quiet Town” - is like something from Bruce Springsteen’s “Nebraska” in its sympathetic yet clear-eyed look at a small town and their sorrows. All these years later, he was stunned that the incident carried such strong emotions when he began writing. When Flowers was in eighth grade, some high school seniors were killed by a train. “Most of these are actual characters that I grew up with or experiences that happened during my time in Nephi,” said Flowers, who was influenced by Sherwood Anderson’s “Winesburg, Ohio” and “Pastures of Heaven” by John Steinbeck.
The songs are told from the perspective of various townspeople, examining everything from “hillbilly heroin” to homophobia, strained marriages, failure and depression.
And it was our job to sort of build around that and create a home for it.” “It was our first time not being ashamed to say the words ‘concept album,’” said drummer Ronnie Vannucci. The rest of the band took on the challenge of turning those poems into songs and the result is the 11-track “Pressure Machine,” marking a new smaller sonic direction for the band known for arena-ready rock songs like “Mr. I don’t know that it’s something that I’m going to be able to rely on for every record, but, man, I took it.” “It was a breath of fresh air, and it was a blessing for me. “I’d never had so many lyrics and stories come out of me the way that they did for this record,” said Flowers. Poems, it turns out, that were perfect for lyrics. NEW YORK (AP) - The latest album from The Killers started, unusually, with silence - lyrics first.Īs the pandemic gripped the nation in 2020, words began spilling out of frontman Brandon Flowers, creating little poems based on growing up during the 1990s in the tiny, remote Utah town of Nephi.
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