Built to Spill

You in Reverse (Warner Bros.)

Secret Machines

Ten Silver Drops (Reprise)

Spearing Neil Young’s “Cortez the Killer” 20 minutes Live (2000), Built to Spill staked its contemporary rock classicism as sure as the Bob Dylan and Van Morrison covers on last year’s Secret Machines EP, The Road Leads Where It’s Led. Zeppelin pulses equally stentorian on the former group’s “Mess With Time,” as does Clash skank and Strummer spaghetti splay. Sixth studio LP You in Reverse also revisits Crazy Horse with “Wherever You Go,” yet liquefies akin to My Morning Jacket where previously the Idaho quartet erected epic song scaffolding mostly in service of Doug Martsch’s six-string supremacy. Starting gun “Goin’ Against Your Mind” acts as a hydroelectric-dam burst, gushing Martsch’s aquamarine vocals, “Layla” slide coda, and the rhythm section’s tidal realignment. Streaming melodies (“Liar”), Sam “Quasi” Coomes’ organ ellipses (“Gone”), and the top down, spark-throwing “Conventional Wisdom” rush head-on into the 21st century like Hunter Thompson’s hovercraft. Secret Machines’ Brandon Curtis breaks down repeatedly as the NYC via DFW trio’s singer, opener “Alone, Jealous and Stoned” immediately betraying his strip-mall blandeur. Guitars should fill this void, but the melodic liftoff of “Lightning Blue Eyes” remains powered by the Machines’ keyboard paradigm. That leaves the brunt on Benjamin Curtis’ big-drum bomp and atmospheric thumpers such as “Daddy’s in the Doldrums” and “Faded Lines,” a strategy anchoring the band’s kowtowed debut LP, ’04’s Now Here is Nowhere. The Flaming Lips proved the sky’s the limit with kick drums, but Ten Silver Drops begs for Built to Spill’s lightning-rod riffs.

(Built to Spill) ***.5

(Secret Machines) **

This article appears in May 5 • 2006.

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San Francisco native Raoul Hernandez crossed the border into Texas on July 2, 1992, and began writing about music for the Chronicle that fall, debuting with an album review of Keith Richards’ Main Offender. By virtue of local show previews – first “Recommendeds,” now calendar picks – his writing’s appeared in almost every issue since 1993.