'Secrets We Almost Kept' album

"Secrets We Almost Kept" album

'Secrets We Almost Kept' is Adelaide's sophmore album released in 2023. The album encompasses layered harmonies, dystopian soundscapes laced with intricate and deeply personal lyrics. Adelaidethegirl ventures into art-rock at points and constructs indie-pop hybrids at other junctions.

This work enters themes of art, creation, social ridicule, loneliness, self-discovery and the darker aspects of love. It is about the secrets we naively think we will never have to keep - falling out of love, family tensions and parallels, nightmares, socially suppressed impulses and judgements of the ones we have loved most.

Influences and refrences include 'Patti Smith', 'Sorry', 'Fiona Apple', 'Andy Shauf' and 'Grimes'

Singles

'Holiday' follows the narrator on a poignant journey of admission and honesty to herself and her past lover. The narrator expresses sadness and anger for the first time about the decay of love into mutually self-destructive habits. She calls out the comfort found in habitual pains and later finds a new lover that helps her break old ties.

The sonic landscape is gentle and urgent with twinkling glockenspiel and hopeful strings that are later joined by a purring bass line. A softly pleading and determined vocal performance allows the depth of emotional history to shine through.

'Jungle Judges' accompanies an ex-couple into a court where their relationship is evaluated by friends and family. The narrator is contemptuous and disenchanted with her counterpart. She justifies her own portion of guilt through a sense of her ex-partner's long-term patterns of betrayal.

In the chorus there is a moment of softening in which the narrator wishes that she and her ex-partner could speak alone and put their relationship to rest in a more humane way.

The verses are driven by a monotonous piano riff, punctuated by stabs of drums and bass. The chorus then slows and expands as the narrator switches to a more reasonable tone.

'Tell Me Secrets' encompasses the main concept of the 'Secrets We Almost Kept' album. The narrator is discovering that the reality of secrets is not glamorous or morally sinister in the ways they imagined but rather unassuming and often convoluted. Secrets are often even kept from oneself, in attempts to ease the strain of half-truths and avoidance. Self-disgust and paranoia permeate this track through the pizzicato strings and a subtly unsettling chromatic bass line. The vocals are conspiratorial.