Raritan Bay
untitled
Secret Names

What the world don't need now is another Windsor For The Derby whippersnapping rip-off, but it sure did need some documentation of (former) local renaissance man/pop art painter/pretty indie git plinger Bart Exposito (immortalized on Windsor's Metropolitan EP, and who repaid them for sevices rendered on the second selection, "derby"), and if you and I have to take it in this 25 minute encapsulated dose from earlier in the summer, I guess we don't have much of a choice, not that you need one.

This is perhaps the final incarnation of the phenomenon known around the scene as "Bart's Band", which like the plethora of past groups, would have all their months of practicing culminate in some one-off show at some bar, and then would follow an immediate disintegration and hibernation for a few more moon cycles.

So what exactly do we get here? Post-post-rock, with polite drumming and keyboarding backing up shimmering and at times nearing but not quite attaining jarring twin-guitar dialogues (need any more -ings?). The changes draw away from the pastoral chiming of each song's prologue, and I almost wished that the songs would float rather than attempt to swim. But then again, my roommate denounced this as sounding like Shellac, so who knows what the fuck to make of it all.

Secret Names, 3512 84th St. Lubbock, TX 79423, USA

Copyright © 1998 Andy Beta