Secret Shine “Singles 1992-1994” (Saint Marie Records)

Before we begin, we appreciate that it’s extremely unlikely that any of you trendy young things would want to hear us wax lyrical-ish about a couple of forgotten playthings of Alan McGee, but should we be mistaken you can find a little piece on Emily and Pacific here.

Now. It’s only just occurred to us, but Banksy began his street art exploits in Bristol (with DryBreadZ Crew) pretty much around the same time that Secret Shine appeared miraculously from the swirling Avon mist. Not that long later, we would look from our window to see his ‘Grim Reaper’ (currently on display at the M-Shed on the Bristol harbourside) painted on the side of the Thekla - a venue on board which we saw Secret Shine perform a couple of times. So it felt dimly appropriate that Banksy recently decided to adorn a wall of the Barbican - a neglected corner of it, but one we pass through each day - just as the band came back into our thoughts. You’ll note from the pic that we got to this, his Basquiat tribute, before the Perspex did (Bansky’s an old mate, and tipped us off).

I hope nobody could ever accuse us of being fairweather supporters of Secret Shine (incidentally, also the band with the nicest sofa of all the "My Secret World" documentary interviewees). We’ve bought every record of theirs that we could amass over the years, and had the privilege of seeing them live many times in the period covered by this LP (and would have the joy of seeing their 1st comeback gig when they reformed in the early knockings of this century), and yet everybody from our friends to our fellow students to the bloke at Revolver would gently ridicule us for faithfully repping them, for over-wearing their T-shirts and for believing that far from being ‘just a Sarah band’ (as our mates all wrongly thought) or a ‘proper’ shoegaze outfit (as one suspects the band saw themselves - though they were far too interesting for that), they were in fact beautifully inbetween, a sensitive and complex, ever-evolving great Bristol group who fluxed gorgeously and irresistibly between flawed and flawless, powerful and shy, frustrating and endearing.

It suited these split personalities that the Shine fell helplessly between two stools with the punters: dyed-in-the-wool self styled “Sarah fans” of the old school didn’t like them, still craved for SARAHs 1 to 8 and 10 on a permanent loop; but the many Sarah-sceptic hipsters amongst my peers also snarled down from on high, basically dismissing Secret Shine for not being on Creation, or for not being My Bloody Valentine. *Sigh*. People overlooked, just as they do now, the easy beauty of their songs, got too easily distracted by the ever-present need to pigeonhole. Even today – their 2017 album, “There Is Only Now” boasts some exceptional tracks – they know *just* how to deploy vocal harmonies, and to incorporate layering and noise to enhance, rather than obscure, their melodic talents.

We’ve mentioned before the story that their lyrics were inspired by John Keats, which is something we’re convinced we got from an informed source, but as the mists of time swirl around us we now worry that it was us spreading the rumour all along, but we sincerely hope we’re not wrong, because we identified with all those thrusting young romantics and adored the thought of Fanny’s letters, or the entrails of Endymion, getting referenced on Sarah vinyl. The closest thing we can find now is Caroline Anne Southey’s “The Primrose”, a rather lovely pastoral English poem which captures young lambs marvelling at said flower’s “secret shine” (intriguingly, another metaphor referenced in the poem is trembling stars – colour sadly unspecified). Though prim and understated 19th century romance – whether Southey or Keats - could only ever be a part of it, of course, because there was plenty of unsubtle sexual imagery in Secret Shine lyrics too, even though we were too embarrassed to focus on it at the time, perhaps because we thought that truly ‘ethereal’ music should float serenely in the skies, undisturbed by such base thoughts.

We also still harbour a distinct memory – quite possibly something confided to us one cider-blurred night at the Thekla or at the Fleece - that the band repped for City ’82 (as we all still knew them then) rather than our own beloved Roverrrs (thus spitting in the teeth of their alleged rivals, and fellow Sarah act, Tramway). Indeed, the sleeve of Secret Shine’s earlier “Unbearable” single proclaims “There’s only one band in Bristol”, a variant on the 'only one team in Bristol' taunt that City fans sang back then, a time that Bristol Rovers had decamped to a temporary home at Twerton Park, Bath. These days, we know for a fact that Secret Shine have at least one Rovers fan in their midst, because they  boast the great Tom Adams (Beatnik Filmstars, Forest Giants) on drums, and he’s definitely someone we’ve bumped into on the Clubhouse terrace before.

Sorry – just realised we haven’t got as far as the record yet - most of you know us well enough by now but, just to be clear, this is unlikely to be a ‘proper’ review, more an opportunity to relive the way that time slips by, and yet your favourite groups remain strangely constant…

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“Singles 1992-1994” does what it says on the tin, compiling Secret Shine’s last three EPs for Sarah, recorded over the span which included their “Untouched” LP, the one with the disconcerting pink sleeve of a slightly scary-looking feline. Apparently, the tracks have been “resequenced for maximum effect”: basically, this means the singles have been put in reverse order, with the technically most accomplished first.

The “Greater Than God” 10” five-tracker, which proved to be their last Sarah release, kicks off proceedings with the MBVish guitar/keyboard squall of “Liquid Indigo”, setting a persistent, super-keen drum machine battery against a thumping helter-skelter of melody. It’s followed by the other tunes from the EP, a well-balanced selection: “Ignite The Air” is breathy, eyes heavenward; “Elizabeth’s April” is more song-based, and feels like it might have been written earlier, perhaps as an older-school indie-pop tune.

But it’s “Deep Thinker” that could well still be our favourite, a song that was clearly not about Rodin but felt more, for me, about my student life at the time (days whiled effortlessly away at the same college as Dame Amelia Fletcher, fact fans) – “inside your room… drinking your coffee” - yet, despite such winsome and seemingly mundane bedsitness the song becomes a flashing cascade of noised-up melody and crashing waves of sexual tension that truly maxes on ye olde quiet/loud/quiet routine (see also “Suck Me Down”, “Towards The Sky” etc).

Next come the tracks from “Loveblind”. The original EP came with a rather blurry green cover shot of what looked like a graveyard (if so, this was no first, for their “Unbearable” 7” had Bournemouth Cemetery as a cover star). The song itself - the Steve Lamacq-played jewel in their crown - is classic Secret Shine: the production is a little opaque, musically both mist and mud, as blurred as the sleeve, but the lyrics are simple and beautiful, the message sincere, and the tune… well, as they used to say about “My Secret World” (the song), it’s not even hidden. The use of Jamie and Kathryn’s vocals as the dominant instruments reaps untold reward. This was the single that preceded “Untouched”, and in retrospect helps to explain why – when we first clutched that LP to our bosom – we felt faint frissons of disappointment (yes: we know now this was insane, and it’s a record we still dip into on the frequent). But – Sarah to the core – we were still proud of the label’s refusal to sully the record with a single they’d already released, even if it was a totally fucking brilliant single.

The other side of “Loveblind” was “Way Too High”: its ambition reached a little lower, and again this one feels like it might have been an earlier tune, reheated in the microwave, but it’s throwaway in the best sense: catchy, of the moment, its hooks and rushes still glistening with the dew that used to mingle with the haze of dawn as the sun rose over Brandon Hill or Windmill Hill or the Bristol Downs. And probably still does, to be fair.

The final two tracks therefore take us the furthest back in time: the two sides of the “Ephemeral” 7”, issued in a minimalist slate-grey tombstone sleeve, although the disc itself has a photo of Gwilliam Street, in Windmill Hill, south Bristol. Gwilliam Street would prove the final resting place of the Sarah ark: and a full twenty years later, “Windmill Hill” the song would grace Secret Shine’s “The Beginning and The End” album.

Here is where, with apologies, we personalise things again, because this was the first year at college, a year of insecurities and discoveries and all the happy chaos of growing up fast, and  it was an honour for us to have our it soundtracked by this record. “Honey Sweet” would have been the first ‘grown up’ tune that many of us heard from Secret Shine, after their more tentative early 7”s (more on those in a bit): we actually first caught it on a BBC Bristol radio show we used to listen to, but my main memory of it now is as the song I used to put on every evening in my room before going down to brave the society forced upon us by the dinner hall, on the knackered red tape player I had which sat underneath a student noticeboard on which I’d plastered every insert from every Sarah single I owned (not realising that the failure to collect these all up at the end of term and put them back in the right 7” sleeves would probably cost me thousands of pounds were I ever inclined to e-bay them one day). “Honey Sweet” - prowling bass, swirling guitar and more of those pristine comet-high vocals - showed just how far Secret Shine had developed their sound in the matter of months since their first Sarah 7”.

Over on the other side of “Ephemeral” came perhaps the only example of a band on Sarah writing their own ‘theme’ (unless perhaps you count “Our Love is Heavenly”?) and we are absolute suckers for “Secret Shine” the song, although it takes both the high-pitched singing and airy sentiment to extremes: each verse pits the roving bassline against painfully sky-kissing voice, musing about flowery dresses and fields and all such good things, before the chorus arrives like a cosh and belts you over the head, yet without the vocal dipping a semitone. It’s great to hear it properly again, having wrecked our vinyl with overplaying (unlike “Honeysweet”, this one did not resurface as a bonus track on the CD version of “Loveblind”). And with that, “Singles 1992-1994” is sadly over.

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A final plea to the godless world out there, a plea we last made nearly a decade ago.  We still kindle hopes that one day – given that so much of their early output has now been reissued – there could be a revival of their neglected but ace early 45s, “Unbearable” and their Sarah debut “After Years”, and perhaps even a chance for us fans to hear the songs from the “Wasted Away“ single and “Each To The Other” flexi that apparently emerged in the brief void after Sarah dissolved in a storm of glorious and absolutely justified self-regard. Though as luck would have it, should you want “Unbearable” in all its finery – and you do, trust me, you do – it’s just been released digitally for the first time via the excellent A Turntable Friend “The Test Of Time” compilation, a record that’s reunited us with plenty more fond memories of our perhaps not-misspent-enough youth.

As for Secret Shine... you know we love you. Always will do. Props to Saint Marie for giving us the opportunity to indulge ourselves. Again.

in love with these times, in spite of these times ad hoc Secret Shine top twenty, as of this second in time: Loveblind, After Years, Temporal, Deep Thinker, Honeysweet, Take Me Slowly, Snowfall Sorrow, Unbearable, Burning Stars, Evermore, Suck Me Down, Voice of the Sea, Oblivion, Secret Shine, All In My Head, You Are Inside, Hit The Ground, Falling Again, Touching Nothing, Elizabeth’s April