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Best tunes of 2020: #7 Secret Machines “Everything’s under”

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As I mentioned in my last post for this series, 2020 was a crazy time.

But not all the surprises were bad. In August, five months into the worldwide pandemic, American indie rock band Secret Machines surprise-released a new album, their first in twelve years.

I had gotten into the American indie rock trio fifteen or so years earlier, shortly after the release of their debut album. I distinctly remember browsing in End Hits, a long defunct music store in downtown Ottawa, and opting for Islands’ debut “Return the sea” over the Secret Machines’ sophomore release, 2006’s “Ten silver drops” because I could only afford to take home one CD. I’ve since remedied my possible misstep, having long since added both of Secret Machines’ first two records to my record shelves. I actually saw them live in 2008, but this was after founding guitarist Benjamin Curtis had left the band to start School of Seven Bells with Alejandra and Claudia Deheza and the remaining Machines released their self-titled third album. Since then, though, all had been pretty quiet from the band’s camp. A fourth album had been rumoured to be in the works* but the things went completely ghost town around 2010. there was never an official announcement of them disbanding. But still, I figured I’d heard the last of Secret Machines when I saw frontman Brandon Curtis performing as a touring member of Interpol when I saw them live in 2015.

Then, “Awake in the brain chamber”.

I don’t know what I was expecting to hear when I slipped it on shortly after its summer release, but for me, it was like hearing the band again for the first time. With these eight songs, Secret Machines managed to replicate the energy from their first two albums but with everything tightened considerably. They had previously gotten tagged with the new-prog label for their penchant for extending their jams, even on their singles, but only one song here surpassed the five minute mark and the whole album is just over a half hour long. Not a weak moment in the bunch and the album ended up at number five on my end of the year list.

“Beneath the silence of the sun ⁣⁣
It’s waiting there as we become perfectly undone.”

My favourite track on “Awake in the brain chamber” was the final song on side one. It is lightning in a bottle. Rife with that driving and relentless drone that had critics calling them krautrock acolytes in their early days. The difference is, like elsewhere on the album, it never outstays its welcome, choosing instead to tantalize us breathlessly and leave us yearning for me. Incredible stuff.

*”The moth, the lizard, and The Secret Machines” has since been finished and released.

For the rest of the Best tunes of 2020 list, click here.

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100 best covers: #29 Frente! “Bizarre love triangle”

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Thursday night was pub night back in university. It’s why I tried (and was mostly* successful) to avoid Friday morning classes throughout my five years attending York University in Toronto. At some point in the fall of 1995, I switched pub night allegiances from my local college pub**, The Open End, to the main campus pub, The Underground, because it was bigger and the music they played was more to my tastes. DJ Stephen Rigby span a mix of danceable alternative rock and pop from the 70s right up to what was current, running the gamut of ska, punk, goth, shoegaze, industrial, britpop, and everything in-between. I rarely missed a week.

And being a regular, I got to know the other regulars, learned their musical tastes, and what songs would draw them up to the dance floor every time. Some of these I would meet and become friends with over the couple years I frequented The Underground pub. Some of these would become nodding acquaintances, either at the pub or if seen on campus somewhere outside of the pub***. And others still were never properly met but were recognized, given nicknames, and perhaps they even recognized me. An example of the last of these is a trio of young ladies that me and my friends affectionately referred to as ‘the flapper girls’, not because of their retro style of dress****, but for the way they danced. Their tastes ran light and airy and cheery, from folk to dream pop to what I would later learn was Twee, and the song of the day***** was one of those that would draw them out to the middle of the dance floor with their flower wreaths tucked into their braids, their long flowery dresses twirling about them, and their arms fluttering like wings.

Frente’s cover of New Order’s “Bizarre love triangle” is the first track I remember ever hearing by the Australian indie pop group. Released as a b-side to single “Labour of love” in 1994 here in North America, it garnered regular airplay on Toronto’s CFNY (which is where I heard them) and made a name for them here and elsewhere on this continent. I later recorded a copy of their debut album “Marvin” off my friend John. Apparently, they released a second album in 1996 before splitting two years later but I never heard it.

Their cover of “Bizarre love triangle” is great because it is uniquely theirs, taking the original material and converting a new wave, completely electronic, robotic dance anthem to an acoustic folk, organic ray of sunshine. Don’t get me wrong. New Order’s original is a classic and truly untouchable for its originality and ability to get anyone out on the dance floor. Frente stripped the song down to its esentials, keeping it at a mere two minutes, Angie Hart’s soft vocals against fingers plucking on acoustic strings. It’s the type of sound my friend Tim would have called ‘too happy’ but for anyone else, was instantaneously smile invoking.

The cover here can’t possibly be called better than the original. However, it’s just so different and different is also great.

Cover:

Original:

*I say ‘mostly’ because in my final year, one of my required credit courses was a twice a week, where the second class fell at 8:30 on Friday mornings and I only rarely made it to that second class of the week.

**Back in that golden age, every university college had its own pub but I’ve heard that, one by one, they’ve closed over the years, leaving only the main campus pub.

***Kind of like a secret club.

****Though their style was unique as well.

*****Along with another cover by Frente: their rendition of the Flinstones’ “Open up your heart (and let the sunshine in)” from the “Saturday morning” compilation.

For the rest of the 100 best covers list, click here.

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Tunes

Best tunes of 1994: #23 Pop Will Eat Itself “Ich bin ein auslander”

<< #24   |   #22 >>

Much like the last song and post in this series, the song at number twenty-three on this list of my favourite tunes from 1994 came to me care of the very same CMJ New Music Monthly CD sampler issued in December 1994. But unlike Cranes, whose introduction was the song on that CD (and was well met indeed), I was no stranger to Stourbridge, England’s Pop Will Eat Itself.

Indeed, I’ve already regaled a few pieces of my history with the Poppies on these pages. It all started off with my hearing of them from my friend Elliott, who learned of them from his girlfriend Jen, and listening to them one day at his apartment. Then, perhaps a year or two later finding myself on the dance floor late one Saturday night at the now-defunct Moon Room with a strange young lady dancing to “Wise up! Sucker” and learning that the backing vocals were provided by Miles Hunt, frontman of my favourite band at the time, The Wonder Stuff. I had decided at that point that it might be worth my time to search out some of PWEI’s stuff but whenever I found their CDs at the used shops, I always seemed to find something I wanted to buy more.

Hearing “Ich bin ein auslander” on that CMJ sampler, proved to be the missing piece and proverbial straw that opened the floodgates. I got myself a copy of “Dos dedos mis amigos”, the group’s fifth (and what turn out to be their last) studio album, and proceeded to play the hell out of it. It definitely sounded more industrial than the material that I had previously heard by the group, controlled chaos of more sample heavy dance punk. This fifth studio album also sounded more serious as a whole, less infantile and more angry.

“Welcome to a state where the politics of hate shout loud in the crowd
Watch ’em beat us all down
There’s a rising tide on the rivers of blood
But if the answer isn’t violence, neither is your silence”

The title of the opening track on the album is a misspelled german phrase which translates roughly to “I am a foreigner”. It starts with a rhythmic keys line that resembles a siren or an alarm and almost immediately, the raging guitars kick in, just begging you to jump around or thrash your head back and forth, long hair flailing all about. It is an angst driven political indictment of racism, nazism, and England’s immigration laws at the time, rife with killer lines like the ones above, tailor-made for shouting along to with the rest of the crowd on the dance floor with your fist punching the air.

Glorious!

For the rest of the Best tunes of 1994 list, click here.