Now Here Is Nowhere

Beautifully spacey and searingly brash all at once.

Grand in scope, majestic in sweep and only 57 percent pretentious. [#27, p.143]

The Secret Machines’ Now Here is Nowhere seamlessly fuses nine tracks and crafts a brilliant and sometimes trippy path colored with a tapestry of melodic motives and fragments of reverbed guitar.

As challenging and glorious as rock can go when filtered to it's basic elements, but not without a whiff of indulgence.

In gaining power and speed, Secret Machines seem to have lost a sense of pace. Now Here is Nowhere rocks hard, but compared to the EP it contains half the ideas in twice the running time.

The opening song, "First Wave Intact," is nine minutes of churning Led Zeppelin-size rock. And it gets stranger from there.

Unfortunately there are only flashes of Curtis breaking free of the overwhelming dominance of their prog tendencies. When used sparingly they are rich and absorbing, but in these instances they lack impact.

It's big but it's also clever.

The Machines have grasped that the zero tolerance of punk for the values of Yes did as much harm as good. [26 Jun 2004, p.56]

Largely magnificent.

The Secret Machines create songs that are just as spacey and concept-heavy, if not quite as quirky, as those on Yoshimi and The Sophtware Slump.

They are also the rare psychedelic band who keep to the point -- there are no digressions into noodly space jams to obscure the way.

A spiralling blend of infectious psychedelic pop that froths and fuzzes for a noisy hour. [Jul 2004, p.122]

They take Pink Floyd psychedelia, Led Zeppelin stomp and Who-inspired choruses and charge them full of big-rock beats, atmospheric keyboards and all kinds of electronic whooshes.

Unwieldy psychedelic dinosaurs like "First Wave Intact" and the title track hint that they're looking to become the new gods of bong-powered thunder -- but then they drop a bomb like the sleek, urbanely scoffing "Road Leads Where It's Led" and instantly re-cast themselves as black-clad top forty gatecrashers looking for a fast ticket to fortune and fame.

Now Here Is Nowhere stands as a very good album, delivering on most of September 000’s promises and proving that music not only existed in the early and mid 70s, but it rocked too.

It's sometimes hard to separate intentional mood-setting atmosphere from indistinct songwriting, but the album establishes enough momentum that the general cacophony becomes as epic as it's meant to be.

Each track is astonishing.

There are moments when the Secret Machines imitate their influences a little too closely, and at times the brothers' voices aren't as imposing as the arrangements. But for most of "Now Here Is Nowhere," the Secret Machines make music that matches the scale of their ambitions.

Riveting from beginning to end, Now Here Is Nowhere is a delightful record filled with memorable and often astonishing songs, showcasing a young band that has set the foundation for one exciting future.

Garza’s assault on the skins, much tighter than any Bonham comparisons could possibly describe, gives the album much of its strength and character. The rest can be attributed to creative, post-modern lyrics.

It's like John Bonham playing with Can, or Floyd-meet-Spiritualized with a barely repressed pop consciousness. [Jul 2004, p.95]