Labels: Ocelot
Review by: Ian Scanlon
When I popped this in, my Mac’s itunes couldn’t find a tracklist for it, this can often be a good sign, as it means it’s on some SUPER MICRO indie. Alternatively it can mean that it’s just so awful no one has submitted the tracklist to Gracenote. The first couple of listens leave me unable to make my mind up either way. The Secret Annexe (all six of them!) appear to be the first Arcade Fire knock off band to have reached my ears, but they have rushed this release, they should have listened to Funeral a few more times. It’s not enough to stick piano / strings / glock’s and a couple of jarring time changes in your tunes. They could really have done with writing a couple of songs. The guy sings like he stole Lou Reed’s vocal chords (the album before Berlin), and the tunes themselves are oddly stitched together. I can’t tell if they’re meant to be naive simple tunes a la the go betweens (who they occasionally sound slightly like) or if they just don’t know what they’re doing? An odd record, on repeated listens it does actually have some highlights, “Weekend trips” is quite a nice piece, but they do suffer from the “I can play piano/guitar/ viola so I’ll play it on every song” disease, there’s not much space on here, and perhaps, just perhaps, that’s why nobody has been rushing to submit CD track names on this baby.