Secretary Bird

Secretary Bird

(In De Goot)

Record Review by Amber Henson

The press release for this album tells me that the songs on the album “bring celebration and sadness, breaking your heart just for the pleasure of healing it.”  Well, crap, I don’t want my heart broken.  It’s kinda true, though—many of the songs on Secretary Bird’s self-titled album are pretty depressing.  They rock rather well, but the sound is downbeat and the lyrics are mostly sad.

The album starts off with “Somewhere Girls,” but doesn’t really find its stride until the third track, “Cornerstore,” where we begin to hear the big ‘90s guitar riffs that stay with the listener throughout the rest of the album.  There’s a lot of really obvious pedal changes, but it’s kinda nice to hear new stuff that sounds like the days of yore.

Mike Semple of Friends of Dean Martinez is, basically, Secretary Bird.  He’s brought in Thomas Froggart (She Wants Revenge) and Eric Avery (Jane's Addiction) for the album, and is touring with Kirke Jan and Einar Pedersen.  But it’s all Semple for vocals and guitar.  He has a songwriting style where he often repeats lines in songs, like, “And I love you.  Yes I do,” and “And it’s a long way back to the corner store, and it’s a long way back again.”

My favorite line comes from a Mellowdrone-sounding song entitled “Sick of Your Stories” that goes “I am so sick of your stories.  I am so sick of myself.  Wake up, Sugar.  Where’d you go?  To the nickel arcade?  To settle a score with the fortune machine?”

Of course, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the strummy track “Tio” which has gotten quite a bit of attention after being in the movie Fast Food Nation.  “Tio” has a great ending, just as the album does.