:: Track Listing

1. Alone, Jealous and Stoned
2. All At Once (It’s Not Important)
3. Lightning Blue Eyes
4. Daddy’s In The Doldrums
5. I Hate Pretending
6. Faded Lines
7. I Want To Know If It’s Still Possible
8. 1000 Seconds

:: Record Review

Secret Machines

Ten Silver Drops
(Reprise; 2006)

Rating: 59%
Combined Rating: 60%


One God-Awful EP away from an assured and patient debut, the Secret Machines have paid their dues as persistent openers and plodding critical lovelies. Maybe it was the posturing that proved both malign and cooperative in the test tubes of haughtier laudatories; the stern blazers, impeccably careless grooming, and crisp, smileless songwriting all pointed to a disciplined but ultimately ephemeral concoction. Those that stuck with the trio, gulped and slunk through the darling simplicity, coulda ended up seeing fully realized prog operas limned in repetition and chocolate bass. If that was your bag, the Machines echoed deeply. Hey, Elton John loved them…

One God-Awful EP and one song away from an assured and patient debut, the Secret Machines are now, again, under the gaze of The Powers That Be. Impatient Internet Demagogues have considered Brandon Curtis’s call to arms, “Sitting at home, what am I doing?/ A boy waiting by the phone,/ Alone, jealous, and stoned,” and thought that sounded mighty like Conor Oberst’s sentiment in “Lover I Don’t Have To Love” and gazed quizzically at the rest of the tracklist, imbibing their souls with hammering drums and stardust guitars, and unanimously decried this sophomore album, not to be released around here until April, worth discussing with the public. Now. Push to pull, within the first song in Ten Silver Drops’s brief and lagging duration, the rest of the album is paid in full. This means that introductions are tense, religious affairs, gothic organs squealing as they’re drowned or pedaled guitars warping; means pretty pools for Curtis’s algae voice and Benjamin Curtis’s tumma-tumma séance; then it freakin’ means a fat processed piano is lodged in your yaw and forced into your lungs. So this means a time to recoup, to gather parts into sections and into oneiric doodah, and then totally pay off with another go around of the first competent melody, remixed then replayed, and this means I’m saying you may want to re-think the patience you allowed them first time around.

(Sometimes they follow the preceding formula twice through, as in “Lightning Blue Eyes,” but no worries, the parts are divided by a supple guitar solo and the second part is a Jimmy Eat World version.)

Sometimes the oneiric doodah is replaced by riffing hoohah, and sometimes the second go-around is a lot louder than the first and has more prominent background vocals. The hoohah and the doodah can both be powerful moments, gelling from one ear to another with awesome precision. And the Secret Machine layout allows for plenty of syndicated story arc satisfaction, motivated by a sexually flawless rhythm section, a sense for swirling ‘70s psych-rock, and gritty, childish vocals. Trouble hits when we realize that the group already sounded so damned honed on their debut, 2004’s Now Here Is Nowhere, and that this album doesn’t seem to provide any new boundaries, any new, frozen tundra. The Secret Machines are still super tight, Josh Garza’s still got restrained guitar awe on his side, every song’s arrangement is still an ebb and re-ebb of soaking synth and organ drone, and the lyrics still battle with neo-adult ennui. Is it any wonder, then, that there comes a time when this can just get dull?

Ten Silver Drops does practice economy; the track list is not only short but the Machines seem reluctant to use up their fireworks too soon in each melody. This translates into an ample selection of brilliant tiny parts: scaling background vocals emigrate from “I Want To Know” and assimilate into a sacrosanct organ bed in predictable closer “1000 Seconds.” “Lightning Blue Eyes’s” one-two drum kindling reappears almost verbatim in “Faded Lines.” So on. For those ebullient about their rhythm section, the repetition is a reaffirmation of the Machines’s indomitable strengths. “Daddy’s in the Doldrums,” all burping bass and sex, should do well. For those waiting eagerly for microscopic notions of arpeggio and chopped guitar lines, peppered in “Faded Lines” are vocal choruses of curious strength; “All At Once” carries a delicate grace in Curtis’s thin vocals; “Lightning Blue Eyes” collides into its coda with grandeur; etc.

Admittedly, faulting a band for staying solid musicians writing solid arrangements can be problematic. Great critical reception with a debut doesn’t necessarily demand a fantastically different sophomore album. But, the Secret Machines always promised payoff in patience, promised a greater whole when all’s said and done. Ten Silver Drops is the tail hacked off in the surgery room after all was already said and the debut was already done. Dom Sinacola :: 27 March 2006 |