posted 05/09/2006 (Tue) @ 10:08 am
>>> Music Reviews
Secret Machines - Ten Silver Drops (2006)
Keep it like a secret
- Alone, Jealous and Stoned
- All At Once (It’s Not Important)
- Lightning Blue Eyes
- Daddy’s in the Doldrums
- I Hate Pretending
- Faded Lines
- I Want to Know If It’s Still Possible
- 1000 Seconds
They’re like rock in how the drums and guitar hit like a burning Hindenburg falling with every beat. They’re like jazz in how the hooks ooze out from the grooves as sweet as syrup until you’re too deep to get out. They’re the Secret Machines, and “Ten Silver Drops” is their second full length release.
Last year, the Secret Machines blazed a psychedelic trail across the United States with like-minded contemporaries Autolux in support of their debut “Now Here Is Nowhere,” a similarly constructed collection of acid trips in song form. This new record fails only in its relative brevity: clocking in at a mere 46 minutes, “Ten Silver Drops” is a full length album, but only by the metering system of a rock listening public with the attention span of a camera shutter. Maybe it’s not the best driving music, but when you can fly, who wants to stop for gas anyway?
The Secret Machines apparently have enough “fuel” to skip the sophomore slump and go right on into standard orbit. “Alone, Jealous and Stoned” is a handshake greeting, a reintroduction for those who forgot the formula of the opener of their first record, the thunderous “First Wave Intact.” Both songs feature a high pressure groove, but where the thunderous “First Wave Intact” was as a pounding headache, the subtlety of “Alone” is akin to a racing heartbeat. Brandon Curtis’s breathy vocals are a buoy in the sea of euphoric noise that the song becomes by its end.
Harmonies bounce around like pinballs on “Lightning Blue Eyes,” and “Daddy’s in the Doldrums” is a standout piece, stretching over the all-important middle section of the record with a stoner beach jam session that crescendos in a tide of aural pay-off every so often. That said, the song is a good mission statement for this band, who seem to be able to recycle this formula into song after excellent song. See “Faded Lines” for yet more proof.
Their restraint may not be the correct prescription for the impatient, and the absence of any instantly accessible tracks like “Sad and Lonely” and the titular track from “Now Here Is Nowhere” could be a deal-breaker for some, but ignore the terribly literal (and ugly green) cover, or just pretend that the record was made in the ’70s, and “Ten Silver Drops” secures this band’s place in the long and echoing hall of space rock fame.
Tags: hard rock
1 comment on this article
-
Three Star Smash » Blog Archive » Darker My Love - 2 (2008) Says:
October 3rd, 2008 at 8:03 am[...] Secret Machines, The Misteriosos, [...]
