TV on the Radio guitarist/singer Kyp Malone devised the moniker Rain Machine for his solo endeavors because he didn't like the way his actual name looked on show bills and record sleeves. Given that TVOTR has previously collaborated with David Bowie and clearly draws significant inspiration from the Thin White Duke's work, it's not much of a leap to hear the name "Rain Machine" and think, worryingly, of "Tin Machine," the rock-punchline group Bowie put together in 1988 to make a couple of records that were critically reviled and almost immediately forgotten.
Malone should certainly avoid that fate here-- while the late 80s found Bowie's reputation in freefall, TVOTR is arguably at present the most fêted band in America. Still, the two projects share an overall thrust common to so many sidelight efforts, namely a willingness to subvert expectations and pursue indulgences, to explore rabbit holes that might never have been fully penetrated without the protective cover of a new sobriquet.
These divergences aren't immediately revealed, as Rain Machine opens in close proximity to TVOTR's wheelhouse: "Give Blood" boasts ragged riffs, an ample bottom end and pleasingly batty vocals, simmering and smoldering like so much of that band's catalogue. However, "New Last Name" finds Malone beginning to veer off the beaten path thanks to its meditative bent and lovely guitar filigree, and it's a delicate avenue he also tiptoes down on the folky, sleigh bell-adorned "Driftwood Heart" as well the jarringly lovely fingerpicked outro to "Hold You Holy".
Even amidst these gentle, atmospheric detours, the album's first half doesn't lack for kinetic drama. Pre-outro, "Hold You Holy" is Rain Machine's most explosive moment, an exultant call of desire and celebration heralded by guitar pyrotechnics. Similarly vigorous, though far more grave, is "Smiling Black Faces", which starts off with horrific imagery worthy of Cormac McCarthy ("Bodies strung like tanning hides/ Oh, and the fly-covered babies") and evolves into a thoroughly riveting, cathartic sermon on race that touches specifically on the tragic murder of Sean Bell, providing a sorely necessary treatment of themes typically ignored in the lily-white indie-rock community.
Unfortunately, Malone allows his muse to send him entirely too far afield over the second half of the album, where his art-damaged insularity ossifies into pure self-indulgent torpor. No one will ever mistake TV on the Radio for tight-fisted, two-and-a-half-minute popsmiths, but three of Rain Machine's final six tracks run eight minutes or longer, and we're not talking about danceable funk workouts here either. "Desperate Bitch" and its immediate successor, "Love Won't Save You", both lean too heavily on lyrical transgressiveness (sixteen straight minutes of turning tricks, "castration fear," cocks, pussies, pimps and hoes only works when Lou Reed's doing it), but at least the former offers sturdy bass and a fair approximation of Sonic Youth at its most ruminative, while the latter is 476 seconds of savagely strummed guitar and aimlessly plangent pining that Jason Molina would probably find too starkly meandering. And I don't really even know what to say about "Winter Song", except that there oughta be a law against releasing an 11-minute song that does include the word "antediluvian" but doesn't include an actual freaking groove. Even the surrounding back-half tracks that aren't marathons and are far more listenable for that fact still don't carry much juice.
This damning lack of momentum is a real shame considering Malone is such a gifted, expressive, wide-ranging vocalist, a frequently lovely and fluid guitarist, and generally an interestingly vivid lyricist. Almost all of his tangents are worthy of being followed-- I only wish he'd shed a little more light from time to time to help the rest of us trace his steps.
