The Secret Machines
The Road Leads Where It's Led E.P. (Reprise)
by Marc Hirsh

originally published in Amplifier, September-October 2005

At 37 minutes, all that differentiates the six-song The Road Leads Where It’s Led from a full-length album is the reprise of the title track from last year’s excellent Now Here Is Nowhere and its overreliance on covers. The lone new song wouldn’t have made it on Nowhere, while the slow and dreamy “Money (That’s What I Want)” veers so dramatically from the original that the Secret Machines could have passed it off as their own had they simply written new words. Better are versions of Van Morrison’s “Astral Weeks” and Harmonia’s “De Luxe (Immer Wieder),” whose mystical lyrics and Teutonic beauty, respectively, fit the band perfectly.

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