Review Summary: Expectation vs Reality: The Album.
Historically, supergroups - largely freeform assemblages of already-famous musicians congregating to pursue a more or less sturdy side venture - have largely divided into two categories: those where the artists involved choose to continue along the path well-trod, securing a preliminary fanbase and at least some amount of interest, and those where a conscious decision is made to go in a completely different direction, sacrificing the aforementioned elements in the name of creative impulse.
Of these two categories, 3rd Secret (the newest association of this type to emerge from the alt-rock movement) definitely fit into the latter, as very little of what makes up the eleven songs on their self-titled debut album can even remotely be associated with the type of sound its individual members became known for. In fact, anyone expecting a straightforward slab of old-school grunge from these forty-odd minutes of music is likely to be in for a sizeable disappointment; as far as sonic stylings, the new band is considerably closer to fellow short-lived grunge offshoot Eyes Adrift than to any of the late movement's bigwigs these musicians originate from.
In fact, while 3rd Secret does appropriate some elements from its parent bands (most notably the occasional murky, dirgey, vaguely proggy electrified riff) the vast majority of its running time is spent on a mellow, leisurely stroll through minimal, hypnotic, semi-acoustic landscapes, which owe more to late-1960s Beatles-on-drugs folk stylings and 1990s indie-dream pop than anything on the rock spectrum - the sort of sound recreational drug users might cherish as 'comedown music', but which will otherwise be of most interest to those who view music as mere background noise for daily life activities; one-time grungesters looking for a nostalgia trip and listeners looking for something substantial to sink their teeth into need, however, not apply, as large swathes of this album are likely to elicit very little reaction from them.
What is arguably even worse is that even the openly electrified moments do very little to dispel the overall sense of dull pointlessness generated by this album; on the contrary - out of the few tracks which even employ an electric guitar at all, only
Somewhere In Time and to a lesser extent
Diamond in the Cold manages to make effective use of that resource to enhance the song. Otherwise,
I Choose Me is a remarkably unexciting lead single, squandering the heaviest riff on the album, itself a re-tread of the main riff from The Beatles'
Come Together (as far as stolen riffs go,
Live Without You fares considerably better with its pilfering of Oasis'
The Importance of Being Idle.)
The misuse of these potentially interesting and differentiated moments is made even more egregious by the fact that the remaining tracks meld (presumably by design) into a barely distinguishable, hypnotic swirl of PJ Harvey-esque female vocals, acoustic guitar picking and unremarkable percussion, livened up only by the occasional Middle Eastern influence or use of an outside element, such as the cello on long-for-long's-sake closer
The Yellow Dress; and while many a band has proven this sort of samey, exceedingly cohesive songwriting can work if done correctly, here, it makes for a listening experience that is not so much bad as actively boring, to the point where some songs barely register (
Wnter Solstice, Last Day of August), and the rest seem twice as long as they actually are.
Still, it is in this dominant portion of the album that its few standouts can be found, in the shape of arguably the most instantly appealing tracks of the bunch: opener
Rhythm of the Ride, where the formula is still fresh enough to entice,
Somewhere In Time, where it gets perfected to its zenith, and the short and jaunty
Right Stuff, a frustrating example of what this album could, and arguably should, have been; elsewhere,
Diamond In The Cold offers respectable backup in an album in dire need of it, while not quite managing to assert itself in the same manner as the three standouts. Everything else is either too sleepy or too calculated for its own good, positioning 3rd Secret as, very likely, just another short-run, one-and-done supergroup which failed to live up to expectations; a shame, as what could genuinely have been a worthy successor to one of the most interesting all-star bands in the alt-rock spectrum (Eyes Adrift) instead ends up as a showcase for squandered talent (this could have been any random bunch of anonymous journeyman musicians) and the living embodiment of the Expectation vs Reality Internet trope. Yawn.
Recommended Tracks
Rhythm of the Ride
Right Stuff
Somewhere In Time
