How does the “boy” grow up in a pressure machine?
Thoughts on The Killer’s latest song
The Killer’s song “Terrible Thing” (from “Pressure Machine” 2021) introduces a boy feeling trapped in a town where everyone seems to live by default. He doesn’t know an alternative, but feels that he could live a more meaningful life if he was untangled from “this cobweb town where culture is king.”
He gropes for a sign to point the way. But all he sees is the rubber plant where he’s eventually supposed to work. The cultural markers — rodeos and pageants — taste like ritual sacrifices of individuality. So he looks inward. He remembers the Salt Creek that reminds him of freedom and tranquility.
The melody of “Terrible Thing” flows with languid sadness. There’s no distinct beat — just swirling without a fixed point of reference. The song trails off, leaving his decision [to commit suicide] ambiguous.
“Pressure Machine” runs with a consistent rhythm appropriate to its name. It describes a working-class man raising a stereotypical American family — with “power wheels / and memories of happy meals.” But he feels “the time slipping / away.” Love turns into a bland ritual — he gets his wife a treadmill and she cooks him breakfast. But “I don’t remember the last time / you asked how I was.” It’s life lived in pattern without passion. The song ends,
Life will grow you a big red rose
Then rip it from beneath your nose
Run it through the pressure machine
And spit you out a name tag memory
This is what the boy in “Terrible Thing” fears — growing up to exchange passion for place. Romance gets flattened amid small-town customs and misunderstandings until it’s just a scrapbook picture labeled “young love.” The pressure machine demands you drop dreams and conform with the culture until you’ve spent your last drop.
A year after the “Pressure Machine” album, the Killers released “boy” — a single written around the same time, but omitted for aesthetic reasons. Despite the difference in musical style, “boy” is an answer to the longing for place and purpose that runs through songs in “Pressure Machine.”
The first lines of “boy” echo “Terrible Thing” — “Head down, wrong fit / Big deal, that’s just growing up.” The singer understands the ache of someone who hasn’t found his calling and whose “jet-fueled engine dreams” haven’t found an outlet. But he reminds the boy that growing takes patience.
The singer pleads with the boy “on the verge of a terrible thing” to come down from the ledge. He can be a man without being a beer-drinking boy scout and he can live in community without falling to the common denominator.
The boy in “Terrible Thing” despaired, the man in “Pressure Machine” conformed, but the singer in “boy” believes that,
Home-drawn arrows unseen will fly / And break the black night.
If he learns, works, and keeps his principles, he’ll find the way. But he must stop overthinking and navel-gazing.
[In an interview, Flowers says that “For me now, white arrows are my wife, children, my songs and the stage.”]
“boy” is laced with synth, which at first makes it feel less reflective than the other songs. The beat rises to the top of the music and defines the melody. But while “Pressure Machine” beats like a hammer pounding a square peg into a round hole, “boy” beats like a heart pounding after dancing. The style reflects the structure in “Pressure Machine,” but the hope promised in “boy.”
Part of maturity is learning which dreams to leave behind as fantasies, and which to keep as the visions that shape our convictions. The boy in “Terrible Thing” has undirected emotions that help him identify what he doesn’t want, but don’t point him in a purposeful direction. The man in “Pressure Machine” decided to ignore those longings and believe that “growing up” means outgrowing the desire to live with passion, purpose, and place. But the singer tells “boy” that a life with all three is possible. One day, the boy will look up at the stars and realize “how small we are” as he gains perspective, but he’ll also see the North Star and find his direction.
