|
(Clicka qua per la versione Italiana)
The Secret Machines, formed in Texas but promptly relocated to New York,
aimed for U2's huge-sounding arena-rock via a retro-revisionist strategy
that only had Josh Garza's epic drumming to commend itself.
Now Here Is Nowhere (2004) included the explosive
nine-minute First Wave Intact, propelled by Neu's motorik rhythm,
the catchy Nowhere Again,
the Led Zeppelin-soundalike Sad and Lonely and
the Pink Floyd-ian Pharaoh's Daughter.
How trivial the ideas was became apparent on Ten Silver Drops (2006),
a derivative album that thousands of bands could have done but did not do
because most musicians have a modicum of dignity.
Their ideas were as old as Cult.
Secret Machines (2008), the first album without guitarist Ben Curtis,
was a bit more aggressive but too pedestrian, despite Now You're Gone
and the quasi-apocalyptic The Fire Is Waiting.
Secret Machines' guitarist Benjamin Curtis formed
School of Seven Bells
with On!Air!Library!'s vocalists Alejandra and Claudia Deheza.
Their Alpinisms (2008)
was another exercise in retro revisionism, but this time the genre that were
targeted were dream-pop and synth-pop, and the revision ran much deeper with
exotic, electronic and psychedelic overtones, notably in
Sempiternal/Amaranth.
Benjamin Curtis died in 2013 of cancer.
|
