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In 1999, computer science pioneer Ray Kurzweil published “The Age of Spiritual Machines,” positing that the super computers that were being developed at that time would eventually develop souls and the impact that would have on the future.
A quarter century later, as we begin to comprehend the nature of A.I, borne of the legacy of Kurzweil’s predictions, producer/musician Evan Frankfort’s band The Spiritual Machines has embraced that narrative as a throughline for their new album, Lockhearted.
“The concept of backing up your brain into a hard drive and living in the cloud forever is not something that anybody really debates,” Frankfort asserts, mentioning the futurist and transhumanist figure as a major influence on his work. “They just debate on when it’s going to happen.”
Drawing deeply from the rich ore of new wave (think Tears for Fears), and pop-prog (think Alan Parsons Project) Lockhearted builds on Frankfort’s sizable legacy in record production, film/TV scoring, and electronic and experimental sound design. Indeed, the big-eared Frankfort has turned in outstanding work with Liz Phair, Pete Yorn, Plain White T’s, the Wallflowers, Warren Zevon, and many other industry greats.
“I’m not necessarily paying tribute — but it’s in the fabric, right?” Frankfort says of his heroes — including Peter Gabriel, Echo and The Bunnymen, Ultravox, and the Smiths. “I took 30 years to actually embrace that sound, in the context of making a record.”
Indeed, Lockhearted goes many steps beyond any sort of pastiche; it’s a looking glass into Frankfort’s philosophical, technological, anxieties and yearnings.
Within 2024’s maelstrom of what-ifs, Lockhearted is the opposite of some bleak vision of a post-human wasteland. Rather, these ponderings connected Frankfort with what truly matters. “It’s a love letter to my family,” he says. “If I were to die today, these were the things that I wanted to say. These are the issues that I wanted to talk about, and leave as food for thought.” And indeed, the competing narratives of hope and despair are the main themes of the album.
Lockhearted’s opening track, “You Can’t Hear Me,” may sound like an antimatter radio hit from the middle of the ‘80s. However, it deals in a matter of dire contemporary import — specifically, humanity’s seeming inability to connect in a divisive and polarized world.
“‘You Can’t Hear Me’ is about the desire to be understood,” Frankfort explains, drawing a Kurzweilian thread through the rest of the album.” We must offer the desire to hear if we want to be heard.
“Anyone with a true conscience is not going to survive in politics and power, right?” Frankfort says, with an inevitably throttling U.S. election on the immediate horizon. “When I see people in videos, where it’s all set up for me to hate them, I really do try to think of them as human beings with real lives and real problems. Empathy is the whole point of that song.”
Immediately following is the propulsive third single, “I’ll Die Laughing,” which Frankfort sums up thusly: “We will never let go of suffering,” he says. “There can be no joy without it. We will create it for ourselves if the universe doesn’t create it for us. Nothing exists unless it is relative to something else.”
The singer/songwriter dials down the proceedings for the simmering “Castles Made of Sand,” built on the premise that stability is an illusion; the title refers to “the places in our minds where we retreat when we suffer.” “You really just need to stay in touch with your own mortality, and your own longevity, and the feeling that everything is futile and impermanent,” Frankfort stresses. “Anybody who gets cocky isn’t really seeing with peripheral vision.”
“The Sinner Marches With The Saint” is another dispatch from this perspicuous vantage, which is right on time for our world of grifters and bad actors: “Many sheep wear wolves’ clothing,” Frankfort warns.
The title “The Curse of a Skinned Knee” is the reversal of a Jewish expression — switch out “curse” with “blessing” — basically meaning lessons learned without blowback or destruction. Frankfort describes it as coming from “the moment of awakening where fearlessness can no longer be a governing principle. The awareness that we can be hurt beyond repair pulls us back from living aggressively at the edge.”
Strummy, string-laced title track “Lockhearted” is a timely reminder that we all spring from the same soil. “Quantum mechanics shows how particles at distant ends of the universe are entangled,” Frankfort explains. “All events are linked together and participate in one another. All lives are connected.”
Of course, the recording predated the recent eclipse, but think of that momentary feeling of oneness, captured in a bottle. “We are here because we’ve always been and always will be,” Frankfort says. “We connect with many, but we lock hearts with few.”
“The Mirror and the Dancer” refers to the occasional futility of self-perception. “We see a dancer but when the dancer holds the mirror, we realize we’re the ones doing the dance,” Frankfort says. “We are only self-aware when we can see ourselves…never in a moment, only in playback.”
“Cracks in the Silver Lining” is a song about any type of faith — even faith that there is no faith at all. “Hit the Ceiling” is a musical representation of “the tipping point… you can only push people so far, right?”
“There can be nothing without an observer,” Frankfort says of “Hit the Ceiling.” “The fabric of reality is alive and breathing. We cling to bits of truths that lock us into circular thinking. We are constantly at war with ourselves in the prison of our minds.”
Highlight “Sonder” is drawn directly from The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, John Koenig’s compendium of made-up words to describe ineffable sadnesses of the human condition.
According to Koenig, “sonder” refers to “the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own — populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness.”
“He feels that our inability to connect is derived from the fact that there’s no language to connect us,” Frankfort says of Koenig — but he could just as well be describing himself. As Frankfort continues, “Sonder” is about “awakening from the dream that we exist in our own personal, private space. Entanglement demands that we protect our enemies if we intend on protecting our loved ones.”
“No Memory” is a brooding, immersive swirl, with shades of the Cure’s Disintegration underscoring the album’s pervasive, oddly uplifting melancholia. “Time is a human construct,” Frankfort says. “Only now exists.”
Lockhearted begins winding down with its penultimate track, “Your Machine (Losing You)” — which brings the album back to its central theme of family, and its cruciality amid chaos. “We have one job — to keep our families safe,” Frankfort, a father himself, “We train our entire life for this, and at some point, children grow up, and the job becomes theirs.”
But given the Kurzweilian bent of Lockhearted, there’s a post-human component of “Your Machine.” “We will begin with robotic components to replace limbs and organs and then we will evolve to be free of all physical existence,” Frankfort predicts. “Physical suffering will end, but we will still suffer. We will fail at protecting the ones we love and we will wreak havoc with mischief. We are human.”
And true to its modus operandi, Lockhearted ends with “The Brightside” a redoubling of the artist’s commitment to positive thinking in a decaying system. Indeed, as much as Lockhearted can feel like drowning, it continually ascends on glittering wings. Arming oneself with the knowledge of how messed up things have gotten, and can get, is the first step to healing.
In The Spiritual Machines, Frankfort shares vocal duties with Future Aaron who also plays bass and keyboards. Frankfort and Aaron have been friends for decades and have worked together on many projects, including Les Friction. “Aaron is the ringer singer,” Frankfort says, “and the muse that informs how I write melodically.”