Band: Secret Machines
Album: Now Here is Nowhere
Label: Reprise Records
3.5 out of 5 stars
It’s been years since Pink Floyd told the stoned, disenfranchised, suburban youth of the world the truth about bricks. Since then, people-music critics especially-have been looking everywhere for a band to become the next piece of the psych-rock wall.Despite what everyone, including your mom, might tell you, however, Secret Machines is not that band.
Secret Machines’ newest album, Now Here is Nowhere, is not the next Wish You Were Here. Nor is it another Dark Side of the Moon.
Now Here is Nowhere is the sonic follow-up to Secret Machines’ critically acclaimed 2002 EP debut. It is an amalgam of garage rock and ambient drum propulsion on a Texas-sized scale-a heavy and ongoing album on which nine-minute songs don’t seem out of place at all.
The only downfall of Now Here is Nowhere-really, the only thing keeping this record from a solid fourth star-is the fact that the members of Secret Machines sometimes sound too aware of their unerring Floydian likeness.
These Machines sound their best when the parts are falling off-when the knob on the amp only goes to 9, but it’s still turned up to 10. A little less psychedelia, a little more attention to their individual virtues and the secret about these machines might officially get out.