SECRET MACHINES "Ten Silver Drops" Reprise
Friday, July 21, 2006; Page WE07
SECRET MACHINES"Ten Silver Drops"Reprise
ON THE SECRET MACHINES' second full-length album, "Ten Silver Drops," the trio fills its tracks with the pounding beats of Kraftwerk, the dense textures of My Bloody Valentine and the anthemic psychedelia of Pink Floyd. The combination is so attractive that it makes you want to find out what's inside the wrapping.
Unfortunately, the box is empty. The songs evoke such characters as an abandoned lover and a drug-addled father, but the figures prove two-dimensional, discussed in the kind of vague generalizations anyone could write ("Echoing words, voices, thoughts / Remembering what you forgot"; "Daddy's in the doldrums / And he can barely stand"). Both the drums and programmed beats sound great, but the patterns are so simple they would be laughed out of a hip-hop session. The keyboards and guitars are thickly layered, but each individual element is dully familiar, a kind of '90s rock cliche.
The Dallas trio of two brothers (guitarist Ben Curtis and bassist Brandon Curtis) and a friend (Josh Garza), now based in New York, creates a seductive sonic surface. But none of the songwriting, the singing or the playing can sustain repeated sober listening. A listener's sympathy for the opening track, "Alone, Jealous and Stoned," is likely to increase with each adjective one shares with the singer. Even the album's best cut, "Lightning Blue Eyes," only reminds us how much better Trent Reznor, Wayne Coyne and Bob Mould have handled this marriage of machines, psychedelia and rock.
-- Geoffrey Himes
Appearing Friday at the 9:30 club.
