Album Review: Secrets Are Sinister by Longwave

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.

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The fourth LP from Longwave manages to be a great big sprawl of an album that never sounds too ambitious for its own good. It’s as if the Brooklyn band and co-producer Peter Katis (Interpol, the National) constantly worked to add sound and space to each track, until Secrets Are Sinister seemed as packed as a Phil Spector wall-of-sound project. As a result, Secrets Are Sinister sounds a little anachronistic until you pay attention to the smaller touches that provide the interesting center for each song: the insistent, rattling percussion and prickly guitar solos of “The Devil & The Liar,” the contrast between the thudding bass lines and fragile, unguarded declarations of love on “Eyes Like Headlights.

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