The Killers - Pressure Machine (8.13.21) Album • Page 24

This album has forced us to question something that we’ve all wrestled with for years:

What do we want out of the killers?Anthemic pop that cuts a little deeper than your average top 40 hit or gutting Americana inspired rock music?”

 

yes

 

u could trade out spaceman for losing touch and you’d still be right

 

both dot gif

 

I will die on whatever hill which says Battle Born is a fucking great album.

 

Here’s the hill

 

There

Don’t forget the 2012 Christmas single “I Feel it in My Bones”.

 

haven't listened to Battle Born in aaaages but I think my take is still the same: too many cooks in that particular kitchen, some great songs drowned out by just too much production

"Be Still" is phenomenal though, I still remain intensely curious about Lanois producing a whole Killers album

 

I want Sam’s Town II and I will always settle for whatever they give me instead

 

BB sounds like a band trying to make a comeback that’s been away for 20 years & used glossy production to cover up cracks in the armor.

Plus there’s that unforgivable lyric about cell phones

 

i dont think that makes it shitty or inaccurate, it just doesnt matter

 

tomato tomato

 

It's bizarre on so many levels.

Never mind the fact that, like you said, he grew up there and is specifically drawing on memories, stories, and first-hand accounts from his childhood in the nineties. I guess then the argument could be made against using the contemporary interviews with the townspeople, in that instance, but... nearly everything they said was relevant to the narrative the album was pushing. If anything, it just further reinforces the point of how cyclical small towns are in their nature, Nephi specifically.

And then there's this whole part about "authorial view," which I don't even know where to start on. Demanding objective, omniscient clarity from the songwriter seems antithetical to empathetic storytelling, made even stranger by the fact that the writer seems to understand the viewpoint Brandon is coming from. This paragraph in particular:

It just seems to display a gross misunderstanding of how these small towns in America actually operate, let alone the narrative function within the album.

Individual villains may be helpful and tidy in fiction, but it's rarely the case in reality. And if everyone could be made aware of the systemic problems that keep them down, we'd all be better off. But most are either drastically or blissfully unaware, unable to move on from wherever they find themselves, and these patterns are doomed to repeat over and over. Cause and effect is easy to see when you're looking at it from a distance, or "several socioeconomic rungs removed." It's a lot less easy to see when you're right in the middle of it, which Brandon clearly understands, and is where all these songs are coming from.

I don't think it falls on Brandon to explicitly denote that within the text as a storyteller-- it's clearly a major theme throughout the album, which any writer worth their salt should have been able to pick up on.

Pitchfork reviews of Killers albums are always entertaining for the lengths they will go to only give the band credit with extreme qualifiers, and that's no different here. Equally as true is how quickly and poorly these same reviews tend to age. Coming from someone with a Brandon Flowers avatar, but I digress. :)

 

Well, that’s been the issue with treatment of the Killers in the critical sphere, at least until now. It’s like ever since Somebody Told Me, or at least Hot Fuss, reviewers have generally approached their records with a mindset that “this is a band only to be enjoyed on a surface level”. IMO this has led them to miss lots of things that are great, including obtuse misinterpretation/ridicule of lyrics that are actually pretty easy to understand if you give them any thought whatever.

They were also put in an “uncool” box from the start in the 2000s indie scene, even by their peers, because they didn’t drink, take drugs or party much and openly wanted to be successful. If anything this looks sillier and sillier as time goes on, given the evolving clean-living tastes of Gen Z and retrospective criticism of rock star excess and debauchery. As if that’s what rock-n-roll’s about, rather than writing fucking awesome tunes. FFS

 

Yep, as one of the dreaded Battle Born naysayers, that song stands heads and shoulders above anything else on the record (even Brandon’s on record as saying a fair chunk of the record is a bit melodramatic and hollow). Overall, it’s the album with least emotional resonance and “Killers” flavour for me, and it’s not like it makes up for it by being their catchiest or whatever (eg. where are the synth hooks?).

Re. Day & Age, I would take This Is Your Life, Human, Spaceman, Dustland Fairytale, Losing Touch, even Tidal Wave over anything on Battle Born - except Be Still, which is in my top 10 Killers tracks.

 

Haven't heard the new one yet (actually doing a discography run leading up to it first) but I'm glad it seems to be generally agreed that Spaceman is a 10/10 Killers song

 

My top 10 Killers songs:

1. All These Things That I've Done
2. Read My Mind
3. Mr. Brightside
4. Dying Breed
5. Some Kind of Love
6. Jenny Was a Friend of Mine
7. Caution
8. Why Do I Keep Counting?
9. The Way It Was
10. A Dustland Fairytale

HMs: Smile Like You Mean It, Spaceman, The Rising Tide, Battle Born, My Own Soul's Warning

 

Some definite contenders from this album, but I’m not ready to make that call yet.

 

1. Bones
2. Tranquilize
3. Jenny Was a Friend of Mine
4. All These Things That I’ve Done
5. Fire in Bone
6. Read My Mind
7. Smile Like You Mean It
8. My Own Soul’s Warning
9. For Reasons Unknown
10. Caution

 

Holy lord. This is their Magnum Opus. Desperate things gave me chills. I can't believe they just casually dropped this after Imploding.

 

Favorites off each album except the last two which are still too new. No order:

“Smile Like You Mean It”
“All These Things That I’ve Done”
“Midnight Show”
“The River is Wild”
“Losing Touch”
“This Is Your Life”
“The Rising Tide”
“Rut”

Would have to listen to everything again as I know I’m missing some but these are the ones that I always remember / have on playlists

 

Excluding the new album, here are my top 10 Killers songs. I am not exaggerating when I say that #1 is the most underrated song in their catalogue, perhaps the most underrated rock song of my lifetime:

1. Bling (Confessions of a King)
2. Read My Mind
3. All These Things That I've Done
4. This River is Wild
5. A Matter of Time
6. Mr. Brightside
7. My Own Soul's Warning
8. Carry Me Home
9. A Dustland Fairytale
10. Imploding the Mirage

I'm definitely on team Battleborn, but I think that its reputation suffered by following Day & Age. The Killers had a solid fanbase after Sam's Town -- a lot from Hot Fuss, and a loyal crowd of devotees who loved the heartland/Springsteen influence. Day & Age was just a bummer after such a spectacular sophomore album, and it didn't recapture anyone from the Hot Fuss days. I think I need to revisit Day & Age, though, considering how many people have mentioned songs from it here. Battleborn is probably the closest we'll get to Sam's Town II, but that's fine.

As for the new album, I expect these three songs will find their way into the top ten: "The Getting By," "Quiet Town," and either "Sleepwalker" or "In the Car Outside."

 

Bones at 1 is the only correct ranking

 

The drop off from Sam’s Town to Day & Age is there, but it’s not THAT big. And it’s also an unfair comparison to an all time classic record.

 

thanks king