Longwave - Secrets Are Sinister Review

Break out your steak knives, ‘cos you’re gonna need ‘em.

The very first thing that you notice about Secrets Are Sinister, the fourth album from New York’s Longwave, is the bass guitar. Bassist Morgan King may be the newest member of the band, but for his first go on the four-string, he is already exacting “sideman’s revenge”, as opening track “Sirens in the Deep Sea” practically explodes out of the speakers, largely due to King’s gigantic, thick, and positively juicy basslines. Yet “Sirens” most noticeable aspect isn’t the bass (as huge as it is), it’s the fact that Longwave—as chummy a post-Interpol act as you can get—have discovered that they’re sick of this mid-tempo crap. They want to do nothing more than to write rock songs and fill stadiums with them....full text On their rebound from major-label rejection, Brooklyn's Longwave unloads a barrage of righteous guitar anthems, suppressing any prior dreamy tendencies like they're hiding a nasty little secret. At his most excitable ("No Direction"), yearning frontman Steve Schiltz aims for the stadium's back row, Bono-style, though the dogged pursuit of spiritual uplift generates more fatigue than enlightenment. After so much grandiosity, the happy eruption of dirty fuzz on "Shining Hours" holds the promise of a more flexible strategy next time....full text Once upon a time, skinny scenesters with Eastern-bloc haircuts started a post-punk revival from their Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn haunts. Longwave had a residency in a bar called Luna Lounge and melted faces with their wall of melodic, overdriven noise. Soon, they were palling around with Strokes and Vines. Now, three years have passed since their last album, anyone miss em? The first few songs on their fourth might fool you into thinking they have a future: crying, bending guitars, explosions-in-the-sky drumming, soaring organs and Mack-truck-thick bass form the heaviest and fuzziest bottom since the naked-wrestling scene in Borat. Leaving no sonic void unfilled, they reverse the time-space continuum to 1991, when My Bloody Valentine released Loveless. But it¹s downhill after the highpoint: "Sirens in the Deep Sea", where Longwave make an epic tension build and erupt in a wordless falsetto chorus. Sadly, it¹s the first track....full text