Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 03/04/06
Label: Reprise

The Secret Machines have no truck with fashion. Here's a band caught in melodramatic, theatrical debt to the proggy, lysergic excesses of rock, at a time when such things are about as cool as Condoleezza Rice. We have two serious brothers spinning in a vortex of doomed romance, thrilled by far-out falling sonic timber, armed with a man monster who is surely the finest drummer of this generation. An unsteady combination with rather puzzling timing. However, it's becoming obvious that when these three get together, not only is it murder but also a crime of thrilling dark beauty.

Last month, the band left behind a smoking crater in Brighton, drummer Josh Garza hammering his kit through the floor, seemingly auditioning for the part of Animal in the forthcoming "Muppets Go Human" movie. Alongside him, Benjamin and Brandon Curtis shyly sky-rocketed through a set of intense and occasionally supersonic 21st century space-rock. At times playing in virtual darkness, deep clouds of dry ice, or both, as a fury of white strobes scorched the crowd, The Secret Machines balanced these absurdities with such vicious, elemental psych power as to leave some clutching for air.

"Ten Silver Drops" is the result of the group's extensive recent touring, where they flashed out the follow-up to debut "Now Here Is Nowhere" on the road. It is a qualified success, at times brilliant, at others rather vague and off target. Predominantly free of the billowing overblown gestures of old, for the most part here The Machines align big pop verve and controlled experimentation to shape an LP that while still shooting across the stratosphere, has to come down to Earth because there is, of course, a girl waiting.

With one eye on arenas the size of their ambitions, there are three absolute killer moments, a hat-trick of forlorn, busted and damaged hearts, matched by blazing sound. Epic openor "Alone, Jealous And Stoned" unravels emphatically, Garza waking the band from their atmospheric Floydian slumber to gallop gloriously to the finish line. Meanwhile, the exhilarating "Lightning Blue Eyes" and "Faded Lines" find the band back on more familiar territory, Garza's relentless motorik kraut pulse driving aerodynamic, sharp collisions of noise, with the crashing size and Edge of U2.

Elsewhere, nine-minute head-twister "Daddy's In The Doledrums" can either be seen as the band at their hypnotic, smacked-out best or the depths of their lush indulgencies. Bolted together by Garza's tamed machine precision beat, it's at times like this when The Machines can start to look ponderous and less than the sum of their parts. Equally, "All At Once", "I Want To Know" and the forlorn closer "1,000 Seconds" disregard the band's explosive sonic boom, the brothers seemingly locking Garza in a cage so they can have a portentous weep.

However, for much of "Ten Silver Drops" there's no confusion how powerful The Secret Machines are in full flow. And, in the absence of the long-awaited Josh Garza solo album, this will more than do.

    by Ben Gilbert