Ephemeral Epipsychidions

Mention the word ‘prog’ to a roomful of a hundred music fans, and most will be scrambling for the exit (though anyone who wanted to lecture such fans about the power of progressive music is likely to have locked the door well before opening their mouths).  In all honesty, though, the genre has not enjoyed the best reputation, despite bands such as Flaming Lips, The Mars Volta and even Elbow building huge followings with albums heavily influenced by progressive rock.  It’s a huge shame, then, that bands such as Texan trio Secret Machines are often too easily dismissed out-of-hand for favouring lengthy solos and effects-laden interludes, particularly when they are capable of producing records of magical majesty, like 2006’s brilliant Ten Silver Drops. While the average music fan would indeed point to Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin as the band’s primary influences, Ten Silver Drops is so much more than a nod to the past – it’s a thrilling and hugely emotional tour de force that skitters between paranoia, infatuation and quiet despair.

In my previous post on Feeder’s Comfort in Sound, I spoke about how the band created a set of variations on themes of anger and sadness, never losing their focus on raw emotion but allowing the music to wrap around the core of the record’s meaning – loss and coping with loss.  Ten Silver Drops employs a similar modus operandi, but the main theme is rejection.  Its opening track, Alone, Jealous and Stoned (one of 2006’s best singles), vocalist Brandon Curtis is “a boy waiting by the phone…thinking that you would call” – a horrifically real portrayal of a man who is the only person unaware of how he has been cast aside by the one he loves.  Josh Garza’s hypnotic drum patterns, slow and weighted until 3’20”, pound reality into Curtis’ reverie, and in the duelling guitar section that follows, you can feel the Curtis’ brothers desperately trying to fight off the overwhelming sense of loss.  All At Once (It’s Not Important) is Brandon’s response to the situation – again, Garza’s metronomic percussion underpins the furious cries of “all those things you never said, they don’t mean much”.  It’s thrilling stuff, but it’s not yet prog – yes, it borrows the concept, as it were, of the concept album, but all the listener has so far is a brooding dissection of heartbreak in just under eleven minutes.

Naturally the progressive elements come more to the fore as the album progresses.  Daddy’s in the Doldrums is the record’s centrepiece, a sprawling eight-minute trawl of the depths of despair that had been only hinted at in the album’s first half.  I Hate Pretending begins and ends with what the prog naysayer might term ‘jazz noodlings’ but at its heart is a surprisingly portrayal of the fear and dread that comes to those who are facing the consequences of becoming somebody they really aren’t. More importantly, the track kicks off the second half of Ten Silver Drops, or more accurately, the return leg of a journey that reached its apotheosis with the funereal Daddy’s in the Doldrums, a journey that becomes almost unbearably poignant in its final one-two punches – I Want To Know If It’s Still Possible, and 1000 Seconds.

Writing on their website before the release of the record, the band noted that they wished to crystallise the feeling that envelops you when, buried deep in an argument with the one you love, you say something that you immediately wish you could take back, but you know that you can’t.  That feeling is explored most intimately in these final two tracks.  I Want To Know… starts ironically with the most melodic of the record’s themes, its chorus melting beautifully into an accordion solo that’s sonically treated so heavily it sound like something from another planet.  It’s a truly gorgeous song, all the more affecting coming from the wreaths of despair from Daddy’s in the Doldrums and I Hate Pretending.  1000 Seconds, though, stops the listener in their tracks. Here the band channel Pink Floyd most obviously, the knelling piano coming straight from Richard Wright’s demo tapes, and the Curtis brothers’ gentle harmonies beautifully aping Dave Gilmour and Richard Wright circa-Meddle era.  What’s most powerful about this closing track is not the music, however, but its keenly felt lyrics.  “Did you think that I had planned it all along, hoping not to be alone…did you leave because you thought that I would stay…I won’t ever know what you’re afraid of…”. It’s at times so intimate you feel you’re a fly on the wall witnessing a breakdown that has long since lost all meaning.

I urge to you to seek this gem of a record out and listen to it all the way through at least twice.  In 45 minutes, three Texans take you from melancholy despair to blistering anger to desolate, yearning desire for forgiveness. The fact that they choose to use some rather overt progressive elements just adds to the overall package.