Genre(s): Indie rock, alternative, baroque pop
Location: Chapel Hill, NC
Released: September 1, 2026
As a poet, I am in an intimate relationship with words, rhythm, the cadence of language and storytelling. Lines, verses, and soliloquies play on the tongue as a cappella myths and lore, experiences and truths revealed. Lyricism and musical composition are the same lovers in notebooks and ink pens, forever conjoined and sometimes at odds with stronger winds than hurricanes. All of this is to say songwriting is a craft meant to be practiced, explored, and shared.
Secret Message Machine’s Michael Barrett understands the need for quality songwriting and composition. On his newest album, Swim the Phantom River, Barrett returns to the musicians’ bare-bone essentials: a guitar, yourself, and open possibilities. He uses his skills as a multi-instrumentalist and his background in synthesizer design to blend indie rock and pop genres with folk influences.
Sprouting out of Greensboro, NC, Secret Message Machine began as an indie rock recording project focused on melodic songs and quality songwriting. Rooting the music in stories, moods, and thoughts like towering canopies, Barrett practiced his songwriting and composition as a multi-instrumentalist. When playing out live in the community, Barrett recruited friends to be his backing band, including Chuck Chamber (now a solo artist and recording instrumentalist as Kaleidoscope Death and C.Chambers based out of Baltimore, Maryland) and T. Lee Gunselman (now the vocalist of Breathers from Atlanta, Georgia). However, Secret Message Machine went on hiatus.
In the description of the album Swim the Phantom River, Barrett describes how he started designing and building synthesizers, perpetually crossing wires and getting electric shocks, before reconnecting with John Taj Neville, a friend and musical teammate. Barrett credits Neville for his encouragement and steady influence on the growth of Swim the Phantom River, a full-length, 11-track album filled with natural stories.
On my first listen, I was stuck in my dark bedroom, rain pelting my window, and the warm acoustic guitar transported me to fields and forest trails under the stars. Through lyricism and genre shifting, Secret Message Machine takes the listener on a journey across earth and space, using travel imagery to ask questions regarding new directions in life and what is in store for the future when the past keeps creeping along.
The first track, “Frontier Life”, opens the album with gentle strumming on an acoustic guitar, its bright tone paired with piano raindrops to accent the sonic quality. The central lyric “Frontier life gets me high / right or wrong” introduces the idea of travel that runs throughout the album, and asks the audience, at the start of their carriage ride, to consider heavy questions: where have we been, and where are we going? And does it matter?
Meanwhile, “Galaxies” works as a bridge between the pop and indie rock compositions. It has strong layered synths mixed with electric guitars, creating otherworldly images and sonic devices where the galaxies are swirling colors lighting up the night sky and seen by the naked eye. The recurring lyrics “One day the sun will swallow us / lift the veil over your eyes / time and time again / you try” continue the outer-space imagery while building a personal theme on seeing the truth of situations where you were once blinded and trying to persevere through the unexpected.
A few tracks later, “Oscillator” returns to pure folk, acoustic guitar with a warm tone like a campfire on the road, dirt caked on boots and deer washed in headlights. Barrett’s vocals are soft, whispering, almost a haunting voice to follow in a midnight forest, tripping on branches and using constellations as a guide. To me, it has the strongest lyricism on the album and acts like a climax in the storytelling. The lines “A man in debt to the wild divine / I wear his face and he wears mine” have a set rhythm that flows easily and presents an image of transformation.
As part of the chorus and ending verse, the lyrics “Thoughts run wild / it burns my brain / pulsing blood oscillator / oh, I could have held you / carry the load / like you held me / carry the load” carry a thematic weight across a solemn darkness that plagues the mind. But with darkness, the audience comes to the realization that the future can also be a light held within the galaxies.
So come listen, sun on your skin and the satisfying harmony on Swim the Phantom River where Secret Message Machine blends blends indie rock, pop, and folk guitar to interrogate life’s journey.
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