New York’s Secret Machines are what happens when you apply Anglocentric droner rock sensibilities (Spiritualized, Ride, MBV) to the finest American engineering standards of scale, dynamics and immediacy. Ten Silver Drops, their second album, is far from Big Apple parlour games. Rather, theirs is a widescreen vision that could’ve originated on the woolly mammoth plains of the mid-west, or further north of the border.
The band elected to self-produce, but crucially turned the tapes over to the redoubtable Alan Moulder (the Valentines, Pumpkins, NIN) for the mix. Consequently, this metal machine music is meaty, beefy, big and, if not bouncy, then certainly lumbering.
The effect is somewhat like watching some prehistoric behemoth slowly thaw out, reanimate, and move its slow haunches towards a new Moloch to be reborn.
Tunes like ‘Alone, Jealous And Stoned’ avoid the solipsistic drug rock option suggested by the title, starting out spaced and slow, yes, but inevitably and unstoppably moving through eleagant phase shifts, culminating in a post millennial take on the Big Music.
A more histrionic vocalist than either of the Curtis brothers Brandon and Ben might have pitched this trio in stadium circles, but their approach remains understated, removed, just on the right side of anonymous.
It’s a strange brew though. ‘All At Once (It’s Not Important)’ is neo-Celtic, recalling none other than U2 and Big Country’s rolling boleros sky-strafing, ‘I Want To Know’ is King Crimson by way of Dave Fridmann, while the opening minutes of ‘Faded Lines’ betray more than a passing infatuation with Krautrock pulses.
But curiously, they lose the magic when fencing their ambitions within the confines of the orthodox rock song (‘Lightning Blue Eyes’). Still, Ten Silver Drops is an occasionally elevating and always efficient record. It may not possess the otherworldly voodoo of the Janes’ satanic Ritual or Sonic Youth’s psychogeographical Daydream, or any other post-punk American classic you care to mention, but it is a noble enough stab at the stars.