Secret Rivals

“80s British punk sheen with catchy choruses and shared vocals between Jamie and Clouds, highlighting their obvious chemistry.” - BBC Oxford

“…forraged around in the Los Campesinos undergrowth, producing a series of sweetly-stabbing singy-shouty pop nuggets” - Steve Lamacq

“Great band from Oxford. Indie guitars, pounding drums and soaring melodies that would be at home in the indie clubs” - Soccer AM

“Tune of the day” - Rob Da Bank, Radio 1

“One of my favourite bands at the moment, so full of energy. I saw them play live and they were so good, they blew the room apart” – Ruth Barnes, Amazing Radio

“Their split boy-girl vocals are reminiscent of Prolapse or Los Campesinos but a wee bit darker… The Cribs going on in there as well” – Gill Mills, Amazing Radio

“Power pop perfectness… The boy/girl shared vocals works well accompanying the punkish jagged guitars… Infectious and definitely worth a listen. Lots of listens.” - This Is A Popscene

“Energetic, open-hearted and pleasingly free of pretension. At this rate they won’t stay secret for much longer” - Nightshift magazine
- VARIOUS

Oxford quartet Secret Rivals released double A-side Once More With Heart & I Know Something last month… and you guessed it, we missed it… shame on us.

Secret Rivals have previously received exposure from new music stalwarts Steve Lamacq and Tom Robinson. It is therefore no surprise that the band have found some more mainstream exposure. Once More With Heart has recently accompanied the best of The Championship goals on Saturday morning football show Soccer AM.

Having taken in Secret Rivals at Wychwood Festival last year, I’m already well aware of the power pop perfectness that Secret Rivals are well capable of. Once More With Heart does not disappoint. The boy/girl shared vocals works well accompanying the punkish jagged guitars. While not pulling up any trees, Once More With Heart is certainly infectious and definitely worth a listen. Lots of listens. - This Is A Popscene

The mp3 player automatically files Make Do And Mend as indie pop but to file Secret Rivals away as another melodic band with saccharin sweet guitars would be reductionist, not to mention wrong. Comparisons to Los Campesinos will never be removed, the oscillating melodies, conversant rallying vocals and medley of riffs that make Secret Rivals also being the bricks on which the former band have sustained their legacy upon. Make Do And Mend sees Jay, Clouds, Andrew and Reece start to build their own.

Ghosting is a great opener, immediate and direct, combining the best pop sensibilities of debut EP Start Fires with punky razor sharp riffs. Me vs Melodrama sees a softening of voice and some gorgeously smooth fretwork, fingers over the strings like silky yoghurt in a Muller ad, punctuated by a ferocious rock riff that bundles the listener down.

Blisters is a standout track, the opening vocal of ‘you throw yourself open, arms stretched out, scars showing’ seeming to be what the Secret Rivals would have emblazoned across their chests should they choose to unearth the band’s musical manifesto and print it on t shirts.

Chiming chords delivered as though through a slightly distorted radio guaze kick off Tonight Matthew I’m Going To Be Myself until Clouds enthrallingly enters with ‘ I use lies as a means of escape.’ Don’t we all love. Although I haven’t ever articulated it with such grungy gravitas. The three minute mark sees the myriad layers that Secret Rivals chuck in with such veracity converge into a fierce cauldron of sonic inspiration.

Indie pop has the somewhat demeaning tag of summery unavoidably interwoven, but Secret Rivals sound is one of English summer days – blustery wind in the face, threatening clouds passing through a baby blue sky, cool content afternoon cider that inflicts one heck of a hangover – life as it is, the sound of gritty reality amongst the soaring melodies.

Although the angst and amour, gravelly emotions and gritty excitement, soft sticking plasters of guitars and wounds inflicted by lacerating vocals that flood the room during their live shows are smoothed down on MDAM, this is still acres above the category of ‘indie pop’ and its inverted commas.

I recommend you click here and make your purchase.

- ITS ALL HAPPENING ZINE

‘Make Do & Mend’

Having started out life as an untidy gaggle of lo-fi noisenicks a couple of years back, it’s testament to the virtues of constant gigging that Secret Rivals’ debut album finds a far more cohesive band in action, although one that doesn’t seem to have ditched that early spark of exuberance and feistiness along the way.

Having followed fellow local synth pop-tinged indie chanters Alphabet Backwards onto Kittiwake, Rivals share a similarly raucous sense of chirpiness, album opener ‘Ghosting’ sounding like a bottle of double-caffeinated coke shaken up and allowed to decorate the lawn one sunny afternoon.

With their roots in 80s riot grrl, 90s indie pop and more recent fight-pop bands like Johnny Foreigner and Dananananaykroyd, Secret Rivals revel in the mess of the party, while simultaneously keeping a fist gripped round the tune in hand, ‘Blisters’ sparking and stuttering with deceptively well defined pop nous. While a wall of guitar fuzz backs up most of the songs here it’s the odd couple girl-boy relationship between singers Clouds and Jay that defines the band, as with bands like Huggy Bear and Bis before them, each seemingly trying to match the others joyus belligerence

Where Secret Rivals falter is when they lose touch with that formula: ‘Me Vs Melodrama’ finds Clouds out on her own in a more considered synth-pop ballad that sounds like an old Just Seventeen angst column made into a musical. Saying that, Jay’s closing, almost acoustic, lament at the end of the album deserves more than its 76-second life-span, coming on like something Roddy Woomble might conjure these days.

At their best, though, as on ‘We’re Not Leaving You Again’, Secret Rivals sound like an indie band from a time when that term actually meant something: boys and girls with little adherence to the macho rules of rock or the polished aesthetics of chart pop, set afloat to make their own entertainment. Quite possibly in a summer meadow and in possession of an illegal amount of sugary snacks. - NIGHTSHIFT MAGAZINE