Photo courtesy of Secret Cities

Secret Cities: This One Time…At Band Camp

By Jeannette Madden
Contributing Writer

Secret Cities Love Crime:

Secret Cities sophomore album, “Strange Hearts,” will be released by Western Vinyl on March 29. In a year full of bail-outs and bank failures, Secret Cities found themselves fortunate to occupy the basement of a recently abandoned bank in Kansas City, Missouri. Complete with bulletproof glass, functioning pneumatic tubes and a giant vault, this space served as the band’s studio while they recorded Strange Hearts.

After recording their debut over five years, Secret Cities decided to try something radically different. Working against a self imposed deadline, “Strange Hearts” was written and recorded within three intense months. The effort paid off with a taut pop record featuring a mixture of melancholy and hopeful innocence, as warm and inviting as it is elusive and peculiar. While carefully crafted, “Strange Hearts” possesses a newfound brevity and directness rooted in the excitement of creation. Ultimately, the album is the sound of a young band testing its limits and broadening its horizons.

Secret Cities formed in North Dakota when two of their three members, Marie Parker and Charlie Gokey met at the age of fifteen. I’ll let them tell the rest of their story…

High Plains Reader:  How did you all end up getting together?

Charlie Gokey: Marie and I met at band camp because we’re dorky that way.

HPR: I think we just found the title to our story [laughing].

CG:We were fifteen or something like that and started trading tapes through the mail. We never really lived in the same place. Marie lived in Williston and I lived in Fargo.

Alex Abnos: Oh, okay, I guess this is my part of the story. Around 2005 I was and still am a member of the Elephant 6 band message board, of which Charlie was also a member. There was some thread on there about ‘Where’s everybody going to college?’ A friend of mine was going to Carleton and Charlie posted under his pseudonym ‘I’m going to Carleton College’ and then what was it? You [Charlie] played at a talent show and ended up picking her out of the crowd and acting like you knew everything about her? Somehow, that’s how I met Charlie and somehow, I don’t even remember how, that evolved into me touring with Charlie and Marie at the time, which was the White Foliage, and we were going to play back-up for each other’s bands. We did that for the whole tour and that worked out so well that they said let’s do this some more, I said okay and we did.

HPR: When did the transition from White Foliage to Secret Cities happen? Was it when Alex came along?

CG: That happened more as we were about to release our first record [“Pink Graffiti”] after five years. We had gone through so many changes in not just the lineup but the way we were making music and the way everything was sounding and coming together, the feel of it. It felt appropriate to start fresh.

HPR: Tell me the difference between “Strange Hearts” and “Pink Graffiti.”

CG: The primary difference is that “Pink Graffiti” is basically the result of having tried to record the same album like five times. It was like five years and we kept recording different versions of things and scrapping different things and that record sort of ended up being what we felt were the best attempts of trying to record an album in very different ways. This new one is the result of a really focused effort where we were going into it with a pretty good idea of what we wanted.

AA: Time wise, I think the new record is a lot more direct, which is the result of a more direct process of recording. It’s a little less experimental, I think, than “Pink Graffiti,” because we were in a different place.

HPR: And your influences?

CG:    Lots and lots of wildly different things. We all sort of come from different backgrounds, so for me, when I’m writing songs and trying to make things sound a certain way most of the time I’m thinking about things like Dusty Springfield, the Zombies, the Shangri-Las, The Beach Boys. Basically just older sounding, melancholy stuff.

Marie Parker: I grew up listening to classical music. I guess most of my influences revolve around that and the Beatles.

AA: I guess from my perspective in the context of what I do with this band, with Charlie and Marie, everything they do is so flowy and delicate, I feel the need to sort of punch it up a few notches. So, mostly what I listen to and what I try to emulate is drums that hit really hard. I listen to a lot of rap, a lot of hip hop, a lot of Wu-Tang records. I love the percussion on those and the way that they interlock with each other.

HPR: What’s your writing process?

CG: It’s been a varied process over the years but now it’s mostly Marie or I sit down alone and write something and then submit it for mutilation, I guess. It used to be a little more intense but that’s just kind of how it goes these days.

HPR: Why don’t we wrap things up with you all telling me a bit about each of you.

AA: My name’s Alex and I was born and raised in Kansas City. I went to school in D.C. for about four years and lived in London for a year before that. Most of the time we recorded “Pink Graffiti” I was living in D.C. and kind of made trips back to record drums whenever I could. Big soccer fan and it was murder for me to tour last year during the World Cup. I was constantly looking for places to watch games and I’ll forever remember our show in Austin because that’s the day the USA lost and I was really upset.

CG: My name is Charlie Gokey. I grew up in Fargo, North Dakota reading the High Plains Reader and feeling like I would be really cool if they interviewed me someday, which is actually true. In the off season I’m a law student these days and while we were recording I split most of my time between recording the album and working for the A.C.L.U. around here. That’s kind of what I’m about.

MP: I’m Marie Parker. I’m 25, I grew up in North Dakota and I went to college for two years in Minot and four years at MSUM. I have a degree in Music Industry and Music Education and last fall I student taught in Minneapolis and I like puppies.

CG: That’s actually her resume. That’s what it says, word for word.

I found Secret Cities to be a thoughtful, intelligent and witty group of musicians who totally rock out when they’re onstage. They love their music and that’s how they play it. You can listen and/or download their single “Love Crime” from “Strange Hearts” here: http://cdn.stereogum.com/downloader/?file=%2Ffiles%2Fmp3%2FSecret+Cities+-+Love+Crime/ . Enjoy!

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Jeannette Madden’s interview with Secret Cities: