Time Machine

For any band that's reading this I want this be said first, don't have someone saying the word “Hello” at the start of the first song on the CD. When I first listened to this CD I was sitting alone in my room, at night, with nothing on except the music when I hear someone go, “Hello, hello”. For a brief second I was spooked out because I didn't hear any music play before this and I knew there was no one in my room yet there was someone that just said hello. The music did start to play so I realized what had happened but having me get spooked out thinking that there was some disembodied voice in my room (which is a ghost if you don't know what disembodied voice is) is not how I want to start off any CD experience.

That's how I started the new album, Time Machine, by Nektar. Even though I doubt that they were going for the goal of spooking their listeners they did it anyways. As for the rest of the songs I tried to enjoy them because I could hear just how different these songs are compared to a lot of songs out there right now. Nektar plays in a subdued manor even though the pacing of the songs feel like they should be quicker and louder. It feels like they want to break out into playing a wild, intense song but they keep holding themselves back. What I wanted was to hear them break out into a wild, instense song where the instruments would pick up the beats and the vocals would put some real emotion behind the words that were being sung.

At first I thought it was that there wasn't enough energy in the songs that I was hearing on Time Machine. Then after I had listened to it for a few more times I came to the conclusion that it is not for the lack of energy but the lack of emotions in the songs. Where is the anger, the love, the hate, the joy, happieness, sadness, or any of the many emotions that should be in the songs? I could understand that the lyrics where written to be complex and thoughtful but the lack of any emotion in the vocals take away the impact of the lyrics and the instruments. This album has a sound that would fit well in the 70's but they don't have the energy that those songs have. It's not that the songs are bad, the instruments are played well, I even like how the songs have a good assortment of sounds being put in them and I like the oddity of some of the lyrics and songs, but the songs don't have enough energy and emotion in them to make them better than what they are.