The Secret To Good Living is the latest album by Brooklyn based refugees from the North Carolina indie scene Hiding Places. They are Henry Cutting, Audrey Keelin, Nicolas Byrne and Michael Matsakis who also produced the album.
The A-Side opens with Dead Dove (Your Love was Never A Waste Of Time) has wan slightly opaque vocals, over a low riff and precise crisp drumming, leading us into the world of Hiding Places, that has a slight grunge edge to the declarations that Your Love Was Never A Waste Of Time.
Holy Roller is the sort of chap who preaches to you about the joys of Mercury Rev and Joanna Gruesome in equal measure, they are looking for that saviour to wake them up, not sure this slowcore indie will have that effect on anyone.
One Hand is the super slow strum and drum tune, with flashes of Crazy Horse guitar and keyboards, that allow Audrey to mutter to count on One Hand all the friends she really has or trusts during her meander through life.
Waiting is the first song with Nicolas on lead vocals and he sounds almost as frazzled as Audrey does, he is shivering out in the cold air, uncertain of his future, trying to be as slack as Sebadoah, waiting to find a way out of the torpor his life has become, no amount of drunken binges can take his pain away.
Ballad No Infinity sorry I don't have the symbol on my keyboard, this has Audrey sounding a lot like Stina Nordenstam at her bleakest, this is almost disappearing before our ears, stark reflections on all the things that tire her about your behaviour, it almost bursts into life towards the end as she makes clear what infinity means to her.
The B-Side opens with the title song The Secret To Good Living that Nicolas whispers into your ears, like a downbeat new age messiah, he seems to be suggesting that being depressed and barely able to move are the secrets he wishes to impart.
Heat Lightning is played at anything but Lightning pace, this sounds like it could be the narration at the start of some dark windswept horror film, slow drum beat accompanies the anti-hero walking down a dark path in a thunderstorm, with all the bad things still to happen. Hoping to find friends as bright as the lightning that is showering the trees around him.
Pile Of Thought slows the pace down to a meandering crawl of musical thoughts that you barely have the energy to make, Audrey claims to have woken up, yet sounds more than half asleep, so very chillaxed to be barely sentient.
If The Floor Is Burning then this lot need a kick to find the energy to peel themselves off it and escape, the noodling hardly their keyboard is hardly a warning bell of impending doom. The album close with Forget It All a slightly brighter more alive acoustic chamber folk song that keeps the air of hushed reverence that is the main motif of the B-side of this very downbeat slowcore album.
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