The Secret Machines
Ten Silver Drops (Reprise)
by Marc Hirsh

originally published in Amplifier, March-April 2006

Following up their stunning debut, the Secret Machines face down the sophomore jinx and come out just ahead of a draw. Ten Silver Drops doesn’t have the explosive focus of Now Here Is Nowhere, but they fire on enough cylinders to keep moving forward. Nowhere is that clearer than on “Lightning Blue Eyes,” which takes the drive of Now Here’s title track and adds a gorgeous chorus flowering with organic imagery in the service of nothing more or less than a love song that ends in rapture. Elsewhere, they find easy hooks in the “It don’t mean much” refrain of “All At Once (It’s Not Important)” and in the lurching descent of the chorus to “I Hate Pretending,” which features a pinging, sequencer-like guitar line, a lyric involving an undercover police operation and a few echoes of A Flock Of Seagulls’ “You Can Run.” What’s lost is the efficiency that has served the Secret Machines so well. Where Now Here pared prog rock down almost to its barest essentials, Ten Silver Drops catches the band trying out more elaborate textures, shifting its lyrical focus from the mystical and cryptic to more mundane concerns and occasionally nudging movement out of its songs too hastily for them to catch. It’s not a start-to-finish revelation like Now Here, but the Secret Machines are hardly the first band to deliver a followup that’s worthy but flawed.

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