Secret Machines
Are you guys currently on the road? Where are you at now?
Well actually right now, we’re in between tours. We just finished touring in the US and soon we start touring Europe. So right now, we’re home, in New York, where we have been living for the last 6 years.
So you guys will be touring Europe, where you’ve already toured before. Are you excited about going back?
Yeah, because in Europe we don’t feel that there’s as much expectations as in the States. The States is such a big country and Europe is made up of smaller countries, so things are more word of mouth there. But, yeah we’re really looking forward to going back to Europe.
This summer you’ll also be touring in Asia. Will it be your first tour there?
No, we actually went to Japan a couple of years back for the Summer Sonic tour. You know, big bands can tour everywhere, anywhere and anytime. For a smaller band like us we never know when we’ll be back in Japan. Before we were actually with a label, Japan would kind of pass on us. Then when we got a label, the label company did not think it would be a good idea to go there until the record came out.
Japan is one of the few places in the world where I’m truly lost. I don’t speak the language, I can’t read anything and not everybody speaks English, so I’m truly lost. It feels really weird.
Kind of like Lost in Translation?
Yeah, but imagine that at night you’ve got to play. You feel totally lost and weird all day and then at night you’ve got to rock.
So what would you say as been your best experience so far on this tour?
We started in the US with these real ambitious shows. In New York and Los Angeles, we played in the round. We would play in the middle of the room, with all the people around us and the lights coming up. It was really cool. It’s not like when Metallica plays in the round. They’re in an arena filled with people. For us, it was a much smaller site. We wanted to be entertaining and we pulled it off. We’re thinking of ending our US tour for the fall in the same way.
You guys are also coming to my hometown, Montreal, for the Dog Day Afternoon show. Have you ever been to Montreal?
Actually we’ve been a few times. We have been to Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver. We always have good shows in Vancouver. Toronto was good too. Montreal is cool, but whenever we come to Montreal, there always seems to be a reason why it should’ve been better. It’s like “Oh you guys shouldn’t have come in the winter” or “you should’ve been here last week”. We get small crowds. And you keep hearing all these things about how Montreal is down, Montreal is hip to music. I do like Montreal. I just wish we would do better here.
You guys have had a lot of media attention lately. Would you say it has changed the group’s relationship? Has it put extra pressure?
It hasn’t put extra pressure, because no one puts more pressure on us than we do on ourselves, regarding what we want to do musically, artistically and what kind of path we want to explore. But it does seem like it was easier when it was just us three. When we first moved to New York, in 2000, we didn’t have a lot of money. We had an apartment, in Bushwick, which at the time was a rough part of town, with just one big room with all of our gear on one side and our three beds on the other. It was a year where we just did what we had to do; write, rehearse, play shows, etc. Now it seems like there’s always someone to deal with. You’ve got to deal with your manager, your booking agent, your lawyer, etc. We have more of a do-it-yourself attitude. We’ll never be the kind of band to call up our manager and say that we need our dry cleaning done. We try to keep doing stuff by ourselves as much as possible. So it’s not so much the pressure as the stress of balancing the new responsibilities, like having a crew for lights and sound. We want to keep playing and keep cherishing that. We don’t want to tamper with our love for music. We want to wake up and play music and have fun. Doing what you love as a career is difficult; you have to make a lot of sacrifices. Right now, we’re in a situation where we can do this for the rest of our lives, so we’re just trying to stay balanced.
Talking about media attention, you were recently interviewed by David Bowie. Are you guys big fans? How did that feel?
It’s funny because since the podcast with Bowie, we’ve gotten these sci-fi interviews where we’re in an interview asking us about another interview. It’s kind of like the interview is more popular than other aspects of our music. But we are big fans and we’ll always have that memory. I mean this is David Fucking Bowie. He’s a cool guy. He’s interviewing us and we’re like “Dude, we should be interviewing you!”. It was very flattering and cool. At the same time, we don’t want it to be the only thing we’re known for. “Secret Machines ? Isn’t that the band that got interviewed by David Bowie?”. We don’t want it to be our big highlight, but it’s really cool.
Your album has also been reviewed by Rolling Stone and you have been in countless magazines. How do you feel about the media attention?
Well it’s kind of a double-edge sword. It’s mostly thanks to our publicist at Warner Bros, who fell in love with the band. He’s great. Since he has this real love for the band, he’s able to get a lot of people’s attention to it. It’s weird that we get so much ink when we have less record sales and station rotation than other groups. I get the impression the people see us as more successful than we really are.
We’re really lucky. Thanks to our publicist, we’re getting a lot of press. I would say that we’re the most overlooked underground group with the greatest amount of press. Personally, I wouldn’t mind having less press, but more fans. Fans are real. Reviews come and go. We do appreciate it though. It would suck if we got a lot of negative press.
What does the name of the album, Ten Silver Drops, mean?
This is a weird question, since normally we don’t like to tell people what album titles or lyrics mean. But this time I’ll answer it. We were in a studio in London mixing. The whole time, everyday, we would throw out album names and we would each be like “Nah, let me think about it for a while”. One day, Brandon (Curtis, vocals) came in the studio saying he had a dream.
“Cool, what was the dream about?”
“Ten Silver Drops.”
At the time, we were mixing ten songs, but only 8 songs made the album, so for me it just totally connected. We have 10 songs and we have been here mixing this album for what feels like 10 months.
We’re always careful about telling what our lyrics or album title mean. I think it’s cool when you make it your own. It’s good to leave that space for you to interpret it.
Leave space for the imagination?
A little bit, yeah. Because it’s fun. It’s like a Van Gogh painting; you don’t look at it for what he’s telling you, but for what you’re feeling when you look at it. We try to not push a meaning on people. It’s fun for the songs to be reinterpreted.
By Eli Larin
