Now Here Is Nowhere
The Secret Machines
Warner Bros. Records
(out of 5)
Two years ago, The Secret Machines put out September
000, a nearly full-length six-song EP that fell somewhere
on the pleasure scale between “Shine On You
Crazy Diamond”-era Pink Floyd and the nasal
playfulness of fellow Warner Bros. labelmates Flaming
Lips.
It was an album that
I’m guessing (without
research) sold precious few actual copies, but still
managed to fill up quite a few hard drives. Ah, the
indie sleeper hit— the most endearing victim
of the file-sharing revolution.
Though a free download persuaded many more to give
The Secret Machines a listen than could have possibly
otherwise been reached, there wasn’t much left
to convince them to pay for it, what with the relative
lack of a marketing campaign and the album’s
drab packaging.
What’s changed
in two years? Well, for one, some record companies
have wised up. Spending a dollar on a song may not
be as appealing as a combo dog at Hot Dog on a Stick,
but it sure beats getting slapped with a bogus subpoena
and a tuition-sized fine. And then there’s
Warner Bros. In a (perhaps not so much, but I’m
going to call it that anyway) daring move, the label
is offering the entire new album, Now Here Is Nowhere,
via streaming audio online at www.thesecretmachines.com— a
full three months before it hits the streets.
If you like what you hear (and I suspect you will),
you can buy it on iTunes for a mere $9 and then,
get this, the label will send you a free CD-R with
a design from the band on it, in addition to a free
six-song CD sampler featuring, among other things, “The
Rat” by the Walkmen, which in itself is worth
well more than the $9 you’re paying for it.
But the best part of this whole deal is: I don’t
even have to review the album for you. I mean, I
like it and all, and I think you should definitely
give it a listen, but I don’t have to give
you any false expectations about how it’s “incendiary” or “innovative.” You
can just listen to it for yourself and make up your
own mind. In closing, the secret’s out, welcome
to the machine…and so on.
Fabulous Muscles
Xiu Xiu
5RC
(out
of 5)
It’s a good time to be alive if you’re
a Xiu Xiu fan. For one, the band has put out its
third (and probably best) album in only two years
with the release of Fabulous Muscles. But mostly,
Jamie Stewart just looks so cute and cuddly on that
album cover, stroking that fuzzy stuffed animal,
posing like Ian Curtis taking his 3-year-old out
to the Chuck-E-Cheese. This is, of course, a far
cry from the band’s last album, which depicted
a slight Asian man trying to hide behind an even
slighter orange box.
It’s this newfound playfulness that makes this
Xiu Xiu’s most accessible album. Yet it sacrifices
nothing artistically to do so. If anything, this
juxtaposition of cute and alarming makes for an even
better representation of the band’s strengths.
“Crank Heart” sets the pace for the album,
opening with a riff straight out of a Nintendo game
that eventually erupts into typical Xiu Xiu I-can’t-believe-it’s-not-suicide
territory with one slight change: The song is terribly
catchy.
I’ll be honest
with you. Knife Play, the band’s
first album, was interesting to me as a novelty
(especially “I
Broke Up”), but it failed to sustain any
momentum throughout the course of an entire album.
A Promise, on the other hand, while a vast improvement
artistically and musically— and boasting
a near-perfect opener in “Sad Pony Guerrilla
Girl”— was
ultimately so jarring and, yes, frightening, that
eventually I simply could not stand to listen to
it any longer.
Now on Fabulous Muscles, Stewart seems to have
gotten the balance just right, offering a challenging
album that tackles deeply ingrained psychological
grievances with nontraditional musical structures,
but at the same time manages to be entirely listenable.
Granted, it’s still not for the light of heart, but
hopefully it will at least attract enough new (and
sane) audience members to the next Xiu Xiu show so
I won’t have to bring a bodyguard for my [GIANT
ORANGE BOX].
brent@red-mag.com
