The cover art for the Secret Machines’ sprawling 2004 debut masterpiece, Now Here is Nowhere, shows what appears to be a white-walled practice room, stuffed end to end with wiring, keyboards, drums, amps, guitars, effects pedals and tangled equipment. It’s a telling image, and one that says much about the complex music created by the Curtis Brothers- Benjamin and Brandon – along with Josh Garza, whose nimble, yet hammering drums split the difference between his band-mates.
The reference points are as diverse as the influences. The most common references among critics – the same one seemingly, for any band that even touches on grandiosity or psychedelia – is Pink Floyd, which the band cited in a 2004 Blender profile as its “most frequent/annoying comparison.” In a nod to their own mischievous élan, when asked what lyric they were most proud of having written, the band cheekily replied – “Another Brick in the Wall.”
The Secret Machines process a rather insane amalgam of flavors, which come out the other side to form something legitimately original. It is wholly beguiling and wildly entertaining, delivered with an ingrained gravitas that dwarfs most of the piffly indie rockers with whom the Machines share their New York scene. There are “only” nine songs on Now Here is Nowhere, but the evocations are daunting all the same: spooky, industrialized Nick Drake on “The Leaves Are Gone,” the hazy, thrilling cross-pollination of My Bloody Valentine, Led Zeppelin and New Order on “The Road Leads Where Its Led,” the sweeping, grandiose of “Pharoah’s Daughter,” and the epic, hook-laden heavy metal purged nine-minute opener “First Wave Intact.”
The group, which delights in turning power trio convention on its head, is often described as a New York band by way of Dallas, Texas. Although that is factually correct, Garza would probably prefer to excise the whole Dallas bit completely from the press notes. “Nothing really against it,” he says, “but I’ve never really played a note there. I haven’t set foot in Dallas in five years. Don’t talk about Dallas, man, ask me about New York.”
“When you’re living in that part of the country called the Midwest, or as Bob Dylan calls it, ‘America,’ it’s like, you’ve got to go north to Chicago, west to L.A. or San Francisco, or east to New York,” he said in a recent phone interview during a tour stop in Wolverhampton, England. “I was born and raised in Texas, and the other two guys in Oklahoma. We really wanted something different, and we had been to California, but New York is one of those places where you don’t need a car. You can use public transportation or walk.”
Not that that was the entire reason.
“To us,” Garza says, “Chicago or L.A. just seemed like a more complicated Dallas, and we didn’t want another version of that, we wanted to go somewhere where it was out of context. New York represented that – it’s very different from the rest of the world, and it stands out all over the world. You can be simultaneously in a crowd of millions but maintain your isolation, and walk the street and get places. We’ve been on the road in the U.S. where you could walk blocks down the street to try to get to the gig, but there’s no sidewalk. It’s fucking suburban hell! Don’t make me look like a goddamn peddler looking for the gig!”
New York, in the end, just felt right. Frank Sinatra said so, and so do Garza and the brothers Curtis.
“It’s one of those places where, if your art can hang … well, you know, if you can make it in N.Y.C. you can make it anywhere,” Garza muses. “We at least didn’t get kicked to the ground and run out of town and shit. We’ve been in New York five years, and we’ve been all in one room and homeless at one point, just working nine to five so we could pay the rent and practice. It’s kind of weird being on this side of it now.”
They’ve had tough crowds in places like Boston, Philadelphia and Manchester, England – scenes they just can’t quite embrace or warm into. This is strange considering what a full and thorough act the band is live, as their layered compositions stretch in all directions and jam into heavy mutation. The Secret Machines also perform with a superior production team and a complete light show, as Garza comments, “If the lights aren’t right, we’re ripping the light guy a new ass!”
Before forming in July 2000, the Secret Machines could count amongst their resume stints with Tripping Daisy, Captain Audio, Comet, UFOFU and When Babies Eat Pennies – regional collectives based in and near Dallas.
“I was playing drums with this girl, who was a great guitarist and singer/songwriter – a real rootsy, rock thing. We could never find the right band so we said screw it, let’s just do it ourselves. At the same time, Brandon and Ben were in a band and we opened up for them, and we hooked up and talked about what was going on, and they were into a punk, hard rock thing,” Garza recalls. “Somehow, we joined up and suddenly, with just the three of us, and it was like all the bases were covered. We don’t need anything else unless we want to be Arcade Fire or Broken Social Scene and have shitloads of people on stage. If you’re going to be in this band, you’re going to be a fucking badass, with no extra shit, and the more people you add to a band, the problems increase exponentially. We’ve never felt like we needed more.”
Woodshedding came next, as the band members found themselves working day jobs and practicing as much as they could, heading first to Chicago for a brief period, and then, finally, to New York. The idea was to have their music recorded and they rented a friend’s studio before arriving, because N.Y.C. was sure to be a drain on finances. Indeed, Big Apple living was tough – their first apartment didn’t have hot water for three weeks, but their debut E.P., released March 2002 on Ace Fu records, had landed. As day jobs kept the money flowing in, the Secret Machines garnered a reputation for searing live outings, and were dubbed the city’s “best live band” by the New York Press within a short time.
The industry found them soon after, and they road tripped to Southern California in fall 2002. The band brokered a major deal with Reprise Records, a division of Warner Brothers and Garza remembers it being a series of advances and retreats, with both parties feeling things out to get just the right sound in place.
“We had Now Here is Nowhere and when we first went in, we begged Warner to let us produce it, and they said no fucking way,” Garza recalls. “So we tried a few songs – ‘Sad and Lonely’ and ‘Now Here is Nowhere’ – and they loved them, yeah, ‘but they’ll never be on the radio.”
Rather than bite hands, the Machines decided to develop as a trio, instead of allowing studio demands compromise their art. All of the necessities were in place long before, and Warner recognizing that, supplied sonic wizard Jeff Blenkinsopp to co-produce. Blenkinsopp had been out of the business for years after a great run in the late 1970s, but was thrown by the Machines sound and turned out to be the perfect fit for their creative impulses. The band members were so pleased with the confluence of ideas graced by Blenkinsopp, they likened the experience to uberproducer Brian Eno’s stewardship of Roxy Music in the 70’s.
“The album came out of the fact that we had no label and no money,” Garza explained. “When you don’t have something, you can be more longwinded and more experimental. And then Warners signed us with the idea – ‘Can you be freaky?’ ‘Cause that’s why we signed you, but just in case we can get you on the radio, we’ll try that too. Instead of compromising and bitching, we looked at it like a healthy challenge. We picked some songs to be what they wanted, without compromising what we felt was a good song and a good album and knowing that we were doing a dance with the devil.”
While Warner Brothers artisans would likely balk at the “devil” reference, it’s indeed refreshing to find an album in today’s all-gloss-and-machines big label factory that can meet corporate approval yet come across intact. Now, album number two is on the way – later this year, or early next, Garza reports. New songs have been creeping into their sets as of late, with the three Machines playing with arrangements and finding spots for new ideas among workouts of the established material.
“Brandon usually comes to the table with a couple of chords, maybe some melodies or lyrics, and plays a bit,” Garza said of the band’s songwriting process. It’s a democratic affair, he mentions, and “when all else fails, we just say, ‘Hey, Ben! Why don’t you just rip a lead?’ We really work together like that, and I think that’s why none of the songs tend to have those formulaic looks to them. It’s not one songwriter, it’s very collaborative and we keep things very lively, and keep things from happening twice.”
The next step in the Machines’ evolution, Garza affirms, is “letting the band breathe and letting each member feel like a part of it” and keeping things fun and fresh despite the specter of a sophomore slump. Much of the new material won’t arrive live until the band is back to playing headlining gigs. Garza said the Secret Machines’ audience seems to have enough faith to let them experiment on stage. They have a terrific fan base already, and compared to pressures from both the label and their own artistic integrity to follow-up Nowhere, fans are something they don’t have to worry about.
“If you’re playing a headlining gig, and you’re only playing twelve songs and half are new ones, you run the risk of alienating your crowd. But our crowd is open to us letting go,” he said. “We’re very spontaneous, and we bang out a lot of shit during soundcheck and just in random spaces. Usually you can just get us in a space and the juices start flowing, and right now we’re on fire and inspired and keeping that alive. The expectations we have for ourselves are what save artists; you can bullshit your fan base and your label but you can’t bullshit yourself. You know when you’re good.”
The band receives a lot of praise from within the industry and from many of its peers, and finds itself in serious demand for co-headlining tours. It’s an idea its members are getting used to, despite certain limitations.
“It was a good time, but it was their crowd, so it was really weird and you never knew how it was going to go over,” Garza said of their most recent U.S. tour, a co-bill with austere New York mood-rock savants Interpol. “Some nights it was just amazing and we were on fire and there were enough people into it, but we’re trying to get ourselves away and slowly but surely build our own thing.”
After its European tour with the Chemical Brothers wraps, the band is taking the rest of April to relax and recuperate, with only a smattering of low-profile shows through spring. In May, they’ll offer up the next single from Nowhere, the aforementioned “The Road Leads Where Its Lead.” It’ll be an EP length effort, that’ll include, in addition to “Road,” a brand new song and four select covers. Garza is cagey on the exact details, but the songs represent a typically daunting range of influences, with a reported Van Morrison classic, a Berry Gordy Motown effort, and a Bob Dylan nugget among them. The Dylan choice seems odd, yet especially perfect for the Secret Machines, who are ravenous fans not only of Dylan but also of The Band, with Garza counting Levon Helm as a major influence.
And then, yes, another tour will follow, possibly with Kings of Leon (the Machines have been approached), and later a spot at this summer’s prestigious Bonnaroo Festival but you never knows. But for now, let the healing begin.
“We’re dying to go home. We’re all kind of starting to get injuries,” Garza laughs. “I sprained my fucking thumb a little while ago. You never how much you love your opposable thumb until you sprain it!”
