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Rarely does a rock band possess the vision and imaginatively-focused talent of The Secret Machines. This Dallas trio is especially unique for its combination of a broadly developed musical education coupled with the freedom to write the music the musicians want to write, thanks to their Warner Brothers label. The band successfully merges its own brand of rock with the sounds of earlier generations. Many listeners note allusions to the past such as Pink Floyd and Spacemen Three, but to write The Secret Machines off as a neo-psychedelic band would be to miss the point entirely. The band’s influences extend beyond the world of rock and even dabble in the contemporary classical realm of modern composers such as Terry Riley of the minimalist vein.
In 2000, Benjamin Curtis, Josh Garza, and Brandon Curtis escaped the confining world of pop-rock and created a musical world of their own with their debut September 000. Continuing in their refreshingly experimental tradition with their sophomore release, The Secret Machines’ Now Here is Nowhere seamlessly fuses nine tracks and crafts a brilliant and sometimes trippy path colored with a tapestry of melodic motives and fragments of reverbed guitar. Almost symphonic in nature, the album is united by several memorable and reoccurring melodies that complexly weave their ways in and out of the ever-expanding songs.
Laden with harmonies at its onset that are vaguely reminiscent of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, “Pharoah’s Daughter” gently nudges the boundary between artful imitation and creation. But as the song develops, it leaves the Floyd sound behind in exchange for an original style as the track skillfully transitions into a beautiful ballad faintly tinted by dissonant overtones. “Leaves are Gone” has the passively nonchalant vocal approach of Grandaddy with a gentle, atmospheric musical terrain as its background. This track highlights the ensemble’s strength in building gorgeous ambient progressions that invite the listener into the beautiful universe of The Secret Machines. The following track on the album, “Nowhere Again,” displays the musicians’ stylistic adeptness in a variety of contrasting genres. This song could almost be an exceptional dance-pop song in the style of the famed Interpol, save for the fact that The Secret Machines aim to do something else entirely with their music.
It seems a daunting task to select a few tracks from this album as highlights because each song offers something different and equally valid to Now Here is Nowhere. The trio behind The Secret Machines aims to please no audience. The beautiful irony behind this is that the colorful amalgam of sounds makes it difficult not to induce the appraisal of even the tightest of critics.
