FROM STUNT TO STALWARTS
Wet Secrets come into their own
Starting over a decade ago as an ephemeral musical stunt to see how fast a not-band could deliver a concert and album, the Wet Secrets are ironically now the most solid musical bedrock under our local fields of heavy industry.
Their sound has steadily evolved from filthy children’s themes to — on this, their longawaited fourth full-length — a dark and spacey breakup-makeout session. Buoyed by congas, horns, de-Smurfed synths and the beautiful harmonies of Emma Frazier and Kim Rackel, the sounds range between Adidas tracksuit disco to at least the wrath and disappointment-asfuel of heavy metal.
High concept, taking on the material and emotional from a number of philosophical angles, The Tyranny of Objects is delivered through the universal translator of perfect catchiness.
In this post-post-everything infinity mirror, let’s just call the whole thing pop — singersongwriter Lyle Bell among the greatest riff masters this isolated wasteland’s ever used to keep warm. The “Objects” of the album title is things and stuff to a degree … but it’s also objectified people.
Getting to the songs, the sleeper creeper hit of the album is No Easy Way Out, which nicely captures the menace of our times via both its fatalism and a sad Eastern European sax sealing up the wound at the end.
Spiral Eyes, the least-familiar song to the Secrets’ dedicated live audience and the album’s final track, hints at the full-on freakout genie this band’s willing to summon with repeated rubs. The production here is especially sneaky, like opening the front door and finding your home blasting through the cosmos at the speed of light.
These songs, though, are the out-of-sequence opening acts for the decimating I Can Swing a Hammer, a slightly heartbreaking (yet upbeat) rocker about accepting backache reality. “Seven billion people I’m just one of them,” Bell sings. “I know I am.”
Give It to Me Straight is the album’s most obvious windowsmasher, though. It’s a full on disco-funk sexual proposition, full of double entendre down to its title — but also with a beautiful twist of desperation and modern lonely voyeurism. The singer is literally begging for contact, but scared enough that from across the room, the object of his desire to him, “Looked like you were wearing that perfume.” Looked. Little lyric nuggets like this proliferate.
It took a bit, but this thing is dark and dirty fun, almost secretly brilliant, and well worth that extra cycle in the washer. The vinyl should be out next year sometime, and in the meantime, we all have those tiny screens as electronic leashes to entertain us.
Meanwhile, having celebrated 25 years last summer, the Salmon Arm Roots and Blues has started trickling in six acts that’ll play the 26th annual festival Aug. 16-19, 2018.
They include the Family Stone, British folk act Martin Simpson, the Paperboys, Harry Manx and the Yaletown String Quartet, American bluesman Rick Vito and Mexican quartet Son De Madera.
An early-bird adult pass is $159 through May 31, have a look at the full breakdown here.
Major concerts announced in the last week include:
Sleeping With Sirens with Set It Off and the Gospel Youth, Feb. 4 at Union Hall — tickets $34.99 on sale 10 a.m. Friday
Serena Ryder, Feb. 21 at Winspear — tickets $29.50 to $55 on sale 10 a.m. Friday
Santana, March 12 at Rogers Place — tickets $39 to $119 on sale 10 a.m. Monday
Eagles, May 15 at Rogers Place — tickets on sale 10 a.m. Friday
All tickets available through livenation.com.
Over on Planet Art, a spaceship of sorts is being built by Brandon A. Dalmer and his grandfather. It’s the centrepiece to the Toronto artist’s new show, Persistence of Vision, which opens Friday.
According to the literature, the show is “inspired by syzgy, cosmic alignments, hoaxes and Philip K. Dick’s fictional future religious practice of Mercerism.
“Dalmer’s monolithic octagon houses an immersive installation of audio, video loops and lighting. Over a 108-minute orbital cycle, viewers can enter the capsule inspired by the pre-film KaiserPanorama stereoscopic animations and use the digital controls to experiment on images of asteroids falling endlessly towards virtual earths.”
That actually sounds like a pretty fun way to spend Friday night, and the show opens at 7 p.m. in the big gallery at 10242 106 St.
The Latitude Invitational, featuring Devon Beggs and Daniel Toumine, opens in the other side of the space.