Many of us can link a certain album to pivotal moments in our lives. Whether it’s the first record you bought with your own money, the chord you first learnt to play on guitar, the song that soundtracked your first kiss, the album that got you those awkward and painful pubescent years or the one that set off light bulbs in your brain and inspired you to take a big leap of faith into the unknown – music is often the catalyst for change in our lives and can even help shape who we become.
In this Love Letter To A Record series, Music Feeds asks artists to reflect on their relationship with music and share with us stories about the effect music has had on their lives.
Sam Rigney, Highline – The Killers, Pressure Machine, (2021)
My dad often sits up late and listens to music in the front room of the house. Sometimes I join him, and we stay up and talk for ages about our favourite albums and artists at the time. It was on one of these nights where he showed me The Killers new album Pressure Machine. It was unlike anything they’d really ever done before and we spent the next week listening together and comparing notes over a few drinks, both amazed at this fresh new sound from one of our favourite bands.
The album takes you to the band’s hometown in Utah, telling the tales of old friends and familiar strangers, each with their own tragic narrative. It encapsulates the struggles of small-town America, a topic that really has nothing to do with me, however, Brandon Flower’s outtakes on all these stories has really stuck with me. It made me look at my own life with a new set of eyes and put things into perspective for me, in a time where all I seemed to do was focus on the negatives (Covid 2021). The uplifting, Springsteen-esque sound of the album in songs like ‘The Car Outside’ and ‘Quiet Town’ were go-to tracks throughout lockdown and for me personally, it was the soundtrack for our time at The Grove Studios as we recorded a bunch of new songs including our new single ‘Shy Today’.
I love it when an album defines a period of your life. For me, this record will always remind me of night’s spent with my old man and recording music in the most beautiful studio in Australia with some of my closest friends.
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