Secret Machines - S/T

“The band has always been more than our individual egos; we’re no less the Secret Machines now than we’ve ever been,” says singer/bassist/keyboardist Brandon Curtis. When his brother, Ben Curtis, parted company to focus on his new band School of Seven Bells last year, Brandon and drummer Josh Garza knew this didn’t mean the end. Unfazed and undaunted, the Machines continued to forge ahead and carve out a new identity out of their many influences, resulting in their ambitious third album, “Secret Machines”.

This is not meant to be a nice, easily-digested album, but it’s certainly a brave and expansive one. Yet for all the sonic invention on display this isa totally accessible album, a rock album that grooves, packed with infectious hooks and addictive tunes. This new version of the Machines sees Brandon trulyfinding his voice rising from the void left by younger brother Ben’s departure, a schism which led to speculation that the band had been reduced to continuing on as a duo or worse, splitting up altogether. Instead, Curtis and Garza recruited ex-Tripping Daisy guitarist and fellow tripster Phil Karnats to complete the trio, with Karnats’ more full-bodied style providing the perfect balance to the richly layered shifts between Curtis’s melodic and Garza’s rhythmic counterpoints.

Unwittingly, the departure of the erstwhile guitarist forced Brandonto look inward and face his own demons, resulting in the band’s most lyrically compelling album to date. Musically, the record gives free reign to an astonishing new dominion of sound, stunningly reflected in the dizzying variety of Josh Garza’s primal, pulsating drumming, which serves as both the beating heart of the Machines as well as its anchor, counterpointing the aural turmoil that Curtis is desperately vying to release.

As well as being their most ambitious album to date, the new record is a logical creative step for Secret Machines, over Now Here Is Nowhere (2004) and Ten Silver Drops (2006). It builds upon the foundation established with those albums while showing that Secret Machines have solidified as a band, even in metamorphosis. It’s a nod ahead of, yet not a complete departure from, the psychedelic space-rock that has helped make the Dallas-bred NYC transplants critical darlings in both the U.S. and Europe — not to mention favourites of U2’s The Edge (who in August 2007 called Now Here… “the last record I fell in love with”) and David Bowie, who asked Secret Machines to close the first-annual Highline Festival in 2007, which he curated. Going forward, the band sees nothing but open skies.

TRACKLISTING:
1. ATOMIC HEELS 2. LAST BELIEVER, DROP DEAD 3. HAVE I RUN OUT 4. UNDERNEATH THE CONCRETE 5. NOW YOU’RE GONE 6. THE WALLS ARE STARTING TO CRACK 7. I NEVER THOUGHT TO ASK 8.THE FIRE IS WAITING

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