Official Secrets Act – Understanding Electricity

The debut album from Official Secrets Act is a sci-fi epic of the type that only Brits can do. It’s a Tears For Fears referencing album that’s not afraid of using repetition and hypnotic mesmerising pieces of music. It’s even kind of prog. It’s also one of the debut albums of the year and chock full of great pop tunes.

The opening trio of songs is the radio friendly pop of the sort we’ve already heard from the band. Firstly there’s ‘Mainstream’, then the Britpop gallop of ‘So Tomorrow’ and the music box lullaby of ‘The Girl From The BBC’ . Once the boys have gotten these out of the way they throw us curve ball after curve ball in an effort to throw us off what it is actually that they do. ‘Little Birds’ for instance has a folk intro, but as with the rest of ‘Understanding Electricity’ the songs never finish as they’ve started and by the end we’re in classic guitar pop territory.

If ‘Understanding Electricity’ is a space epic then ‘Head For Herod’ is the scene where we follow a space walk or some debris drifting through the endless void. It’s a huge cinematic song that appears gentle but yet contains a lot of power, as though what’s on the surface is only the very tip of what the song really offers. This is followed by ‘Momentary Sanctuary’ which is the central point of this album and very proggy but, and we never thought we’d say this, in a very good way. It’s sci-fi keyboards bolted to a throbbing rubbery bassline that eventually gives way to a gentle folk piece that would recall Fleet Foxes if they came from Southern England rather than Seattle.

There’s a lot of disparate sounds going on on this record and it nearly falls apart at times, at least it would do for a lesser band. Luckily there’s the Bowie / Morrissey like croon of frontman Thomas Burke which keeps everything in check and lends cohesion. This also allows Official Secrets Act to be able to add in little bits of found sounds that just gives the album that slight bit more depth and realism. Not only this but Burke gets to deliver some great lines across the album, “I must have landed on somebody’s feet” on ‘Mainstream’ for one.

At the very least this is an interesting record, the arrangement is clever and it’s an argument against the death of British guitar bands in the face of more experiential electronic pop. After all, the two don’t have to be mutually exclusive.