By Sean Moeller

It’s only time. And you know I’ll wait.

That’s something Secret Machine Brandon Curtis said through my headphones tonight, when he was epically explaining something tragic and horribly interesting in “All At Once (It’s Not Important),” a song from the band’s new album “Ten Silver Drops,” the most required album of the month and possibly of the year thus far. The words and the idea – which Curtis seems to throw at you with the sharp biting wind of helicopter blades and the great, wave-generating sweeping motions of his own arms – didn’t ring completely true in the personal lives of the three members of Dallas-based The Secret Machines, but they may pan out one way or another.

The patience that they’re taking with their collective fate in this funny, bitchin’ business of making rock and roll for the kids should earn them a career if it kills them and taints every meaningful relationship they may ever develop with another person. With each album – they’ve averaged one a year since 2004’s “Now Here Is Nowhere” – the quality of song has improved exponentially and the way they’ve established themselves as a bonafide new, spacier Flaming Lips in the making just bellows and screams bloody murder, railing something like, “Someone pay us some fucking attention!! We are worth your time and your sticky dollar bills. We know that buying records in stores and at shows from the actual people creating the content for those records is a very uncouth practice, but we’re confident you will be satisfied with your decision. Hello?? Is anyone out there? We’re The Secret Machines!”

Curtis, his bass-playing brother Ben and their cousin, drummer Josh Garza, are running themselves absolutely ragged to reach people, a detriment to the lives and significants they left at home to tour like dogs for the past two years. They’re not in this for the instant return. They wouldn’t pay attention to quarterly reports. They’re working like Van Gogh and KISS. And even though some feelings got trashed and people got hurt over those last two years, progress was made.

“It does all seem worth it when you’re able to express it like we did with (“Ten Silver Drops”), when you can make it into art,” Garza said from a tour stop in Pittsburgh Friday. “I think the only serious thing that stands out from those years is that we’re not serious, rich rock stars. A lot of people tour all the time so that they can go home and enjoy it, but we go home and there’s no money. The rent’s paid, so you know it could be worse.

“We’re just not at that level yet. We do see the progress with our fans though. I want people to see and think, “This band keeps putting out records so I should check them out at some point. There are a lot of bands that people didn’t even notice until their second and third albums – U2, REM, The Pixies, Nirv ana. For Nirvana, it wasn’t until their second record that anyone had ever fucking heard of them. There are a ton of examples where bands just kept chugging and chugging along. U2’s one of the biggest bands in the world and nobody ever talks about how nobody had ever heard those first two records. I love them, but nobody really listened to them. People don’t want to give bands credit for doing it the old-fashioned way.

“We’re just going to do it like Van Gogh did, where you’re just a struggling motherfucker, doing what you can. Eventually, somebody will take notice and if not, well, alright man, that’s what the Gods sent us down to do.”

The songs on “Ten Silver Drops” each have elements of quicksilver in them, as if thermometers were busted up in each of them, exposing the poisonous metallic fluid that’s fine and safe only when it’s giving you a temperature reading. You wouldn’t want it in your bed or sidling up to your kitchen table for eggs and toast. But the long months, and longer years on the road supporting albums frayed relationships, first to the boiling and then to the breaking point. Every song is a different variation of, “We’re over,” and Curtis pulls the words from his quiver in a way that never makes them seem pouting or woe-is-me-ish. He contemplates and analyzes the way a man does months after the fact, over a few pots of coffee or cases of beer, a carton of cigarettes and a rational head, when all of the blame and accusations have been cleared out and all that’s left breathing is the naked truth. His lyrics give the impression that they’re the best-of material from countless phone fights from one cell phone to another, or the ruminations from those flares when all the dust had settled and dawn was clearing out the clutter.

“It was probably the first time in our lives when we did that kind of touring. We toured forever and we didn’t have much time at home. The only time we were home, we were recording the next record and then we went right back out. It was difficult, but it was worth it. It wasn’t like doing construction in the summer, in Texas. It wasn’t that kind of work,” Garza said. “It puts a strain on any type of relationship. It does get confusing and difficult. It was hard because we always had girlfriends giving us a hard time about it. I think we came out alright.”

Getting out and in front of the people is where the Machines think their best chance of survival is. “Ten Silver Drops” was leaked to the world in February and the band was thankful. They delivered the album to Reprise right before Thanksgiving and wanted to put it out immediately, but they were told to wait, that it wasn’t time.

“We’re not the kind of band where it’s really that imperative to have a release date,” Garza said. “In the good old days, bands were putting records out every six months. Zeppelin’s first two records came out in one year. Imagine someone telling a painter, “You can’t show any of your paintings for three years.’ I think I’d like the option to put out a record every six months and I’m not talking about b-sides shit either. It doesn’t benefit us to have an album come out ever two or three years. We want to write new songs. We want to record albums. We’re kind of on fire right now.”

www.thesecretmachines.com