Since their promising 2004 release, Now Here is Nowhere, Secret Machines have seemed hell-bent on excising all of their redeeming qualities. On their latest album, they’ve finally achieved their goal. Gone are most of the band’s pop leanings, gone are their psychedelic textures, gone is anything resembling restraint. Heck, gone is guitarist Ben Curtis, who abandoned his brother Brandon in Secret Machines to concentrate on the far more worthy School of Seven Bells.
What’s left after all of this purging? Bloated, dreary space-rock that only tires where it’s supposed to excite. On their new self-titled album, Secret Machines exemplify all of the clinical precision of krautrock with none of the payoff. They revel in stoner repetition without any of the trip-inducing sonics. They’ve got the stadium-pandering bombast of U2 with none of the hooks, the pomposity of Roger Waters-led Pink Floyd without the laser show.
With the exception of the interminable, one-chord slog of “The Fire is Waiting,” the album doesn’t feature any truly awful songs, just a bunch of dull, forgettable ones that combine to form nothing at all.
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