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WHAT IS SECRETLY SOCIETY?

Secretly Society is our spin on a classic idea - the record club. The pitch is simple. One record, in an exclusive, Secretly Society vinyl color, shipped to your door every month. Oh yeah, and shipping is included. find out more.

Members Only Deals

Secretly Society members gain access to these limited-edition items with free shipping on all items with your subscription. Guest list access (subject to availability). Plus early access to limited items and sales.


 

July 2023 Secretly Society Album

The Greater Wings (Society Exclusive)

Julie Byrne
Label: Ghostly International

Released on July 7th. Julie Byrne 'The Greater Wings' Secretly Society Exclusive on Sand Colored Vinyl.

The first album in over six years from American songwriter Julie Byrne is a testament to patience and determination, the willingness to transform through the desolation of loss, the vitality of renewal, and the courage to rise, forever changed. For nearly a decade, Byrne has moved through the world as a characteristically private artist largely outside the public eye. A self-taught musician that has committed her life to her work, she now emerges from a deeply trying and generative period with the most powerful, lustrous, and life-affirming music of her career, The Greater Wings. While they hold the plasticity of grief and trauma, the songs are universally resonant, unbridled in their devotion and joy, held up by the love and alliance of a chosen family. Byrne leans further into atmospheres both expansive and intimate; the lush, evocative songcraft flows between her signature fingerpicked guitar, synthesizer, and a newly adopted piano, made wider by flourishes of harp and strings. It is the transcendent sound of resource, of friendship that was never without romance, of loyalty that burns from within like a heart on fire, and the life force summoned in unrepeatable moments — raw, gorgeous, and wild.

The Greater Wings was written across several seasons, pulling imagery from nights on tour, periods of isolation, and the drives cross-country for its various collaborations between Chicago, New York, and Los Ange-
les. Recording started with the late Eric Littmann, her longtime creative partner and Not Even Happiness producer, and finished in the Catskills of New York with producer Alex Somers (Sigur Rós, Julianna Barwick).

“My hope for The Greater Wings is that it lives as a love letter to my cho- sen family and as an expression of the depth of my commitment to our shared future. Being reshaped by grief also has me more aware of what death does not take from me. I commit that to heart, to words, to sound. Music is not bound to any kind of linear time, so in the capacity to record and speak to the future: this is what it felt like to me, when we were simultaneous, alive, occurring all at once. What it has felt like to go up against my edge and push, the love that has made it worth all this fight. These memories are my values, they belong with me.”

Julie Byrne will confess the success of her 2017 LP Not Even Happiness was unexpected; nine gracefully road-worn odes to the fringes of life she assembled without any expectation that they’d travel so far beyond their DIY origins. But its hushed closing track, “I Live Now As A Singer,” did forecast an intention. She knew the open space — occupied by Littmann’s signature palette of synth tones, Jake Falby’s strings, and Byrne’s robust, drifting voice — presented something new and thrilling, something they’d develop as a live band touring the world, and what would later be under- stood as the catalyst for material to come. From orchestral folk medi- tations (“The Greater Wings”, “Portrait of a Clear Day”) to windswept piano ballads (“Moonless”, “Death Is The Diamond”) to the luminous, synth-driven euphoria of “Summer Glass,” The Greater Wings builds on this revelatory space at every turn.
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August 2023 Secretly Society Album

Supermodels (Society Exclusive)

Claud
Label: Saddest Factory Records ™

Released on July 14th. Claud 'Supermodels' Secretly Society Exclusive on Marble Vinyl.

No matter your age or station, Supermodels is the sort of record you can hear yourself in. Claud’s engrossing, poignant, and often pointedly funny second album is a confident diary of the mercury of life and love. Imagine yourself in a crowded concert hall, singing along to buoyant but frustrated “It’s Not About You” or the beautifully resilient “Spare Tire,” which sublimates old sadness into new winking, wry new strength.. Through the sea of twisted faces, Claud makes eye contact and grins, all sly and sweet and sad. That’s how Supermodels feels—an intimate connection, a chuckle and a sigh, a gift to share amid all this isolating noise.

Claud began Supermodels at the end. In late 2021, they released their winning debut, Super Monster, but soon found life turned upside down by departure, loss, and voids where support networks once stood. So, of course, they started writing, using not only their new acoustic guitar (a rare one, but so desiccated from the city’s winter it wouldn’t stay in tune) and a second-hand upright piano recently wedged inside the apartment (free, but tuned hopelessly down, with multiple missing octaves).

Claud loved these “three-legged animals,” somehow in tune with one another. “A useless mess I call myself/A useless hand that I’ve been dealt,” Claud soon cooed above them on the deceptively spry “All Over,” a song about being able to imagine little but the end. At the close of the moving and mighty farewell exhalation “Screwdriver,” they admit, “I’m thinking about moving out of New York.” Claud had Supermodels’ end; now, for the rest.

Claud’s apartment, with that stubborn acoustic guitar and worn piano, came to articulate a lot of the experiences that underlie Supermodels itself. Fissures in romances and friendships, pressures of recording careers, the casualties of growing up, the laugh lines of life: Each of these 13 songs, as Claud puts it, is another journal entry, threaded together with scant regard for genre but, like the best pop music, with hooks that linger as powerfully as any memory.

Opener “Crumbs” begins with gorgeous infatuation, scenes from their first taste of domesticity, delivered tenderly over soft chords and sparkling electronics. For Claud, this was always a love song, at least until they realized it might actually be a siren’s song. It lures you into its beautiful, happy world, then pulls you deeper toward the dark as you take a second look. Uncertainty permeates “Every Fucking Time,” an anthemic interrogation of a relationship’s terms and conditions that somehow triangulates Avril, Oasis, and Taylor in less than three minutes. As Claud sits in the bar after hours defending Regina Spektor to a partner, they wonder if this other person is all hot air and broken promises—or, just maybe, Claud is overanalyzing another good thing again.

Claud approaches all of Supermodels with new depth and the kind of humor that only comes with undeniable new confidence, rendered in structures and hooks that are deceptively sophisticated. Genre becomes Claud’s playground, an obstacle course full of supposed barriers to climb over and cavort upon. Where Super Monster was rendered mostly in their childhood bedroom, Supermodels was created in Claud’s own space, with a team of confidants and collaborators.

And how could Claud not be more assured, after all, when they collaborated with Dan Wilson of Semisonic, a band they’ve been covering for the better part of a decade? The pair finished several songs together in a feverish session. The cut here, “A Good Thing,” is one of the most guileless and magnetic numbers in Claud’s catalog, a bittersweet sugar rush about wanting to fall all the way into a relationship that seems strong but instead overthinking everything entirely until maybe you ruin what was indeed a good thing. Claud still finds ways to laugh at the situation, the exhausting tedium of dating (“In the kitchen mixing drinks/I’d quit stirring but I’d fall asleep”) and the uneven terrain of figuring it out (“You piss me off, you turn me on”). Maybe the bad parts do make for the best punchlines?

“You caught me looking at photographs of supermodels,” they sing, voice rising slowly over that free and broken piano on “Screwdriver.” “Trying not to cry when I look back at myself.” It’s a staggering little moment, a reminder of the ways we are all working to beat back a dozen different insecurities. But Claud doesn’t hide anything on Supermodels. Here are all the feelings of these last few years, set first to page and then to songs we can all share. They are kernels of despair, redemption, wit, and, ultimately, insight, here to remind us we’re neither the first nor the last to face these blues and keep going.
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Members Only

Secretly Society members gain access to these limited-edition items…and many more


WHAT IS SECRETLY SOCIETY?

The record club reinvented

Secretly Society is our spin on a classic idea - the record club. The pitch is simple. One record, in an exclusive, Secretly Society vinyl color, shipped to your door every month. Oh yeah, and shipping is included.

IS IT REALLY THAT SIMPLE?

Yes. Yes it is.

WHAT RECORDS WILL I GET?

Expect a mix of new artists, established vets, and important represses from our extensive Secretly Group back catalog, featuring the best of Dead Oceans, Jagjaguwar, and Secretly Canadian. See the already-announced albums above!

WHAT IF I HATE THIS MONTH'S ALBUM?

Yikes! Hate seems a bit strong. We would recommend you at least give it another, fresh listen. If you are absolutely sure you'll hate it, that's totally fine. We offer an opportunity to "Skip" a month's album and go to the next one. You get 1 Skip every 6 months, so use it wisely. To use your Skip email us at society@secretlystore.com.

WHEN DO I GET MY RECORDS?

Great question. You receive your first album the month after you join, as soon as the calendar flips. So, no matter whether you sign up on September 1st or September 30th, the first record you receive will be in October. Shortly after subscriptions close on the 1st of the month, we begin shipping that month’s albums, and we'll usually be able to send out all Secretly Society shipments in the first full week of a given month. All of that adds up to US customers receiving their records in the second week of the month and international customers in the third or fourth week. We understand that the Secretly Society timeline doesn't always play nicely with album release dates, so feel free to hit us up with questions at society@secretlystore.com.

LET'S TALK MONEY.

Definitely. Here's how it works: you pay for the entire subscription up front, one time, shipping included. Cool, right? Then you have until your subscription ends to cancel your plan or it will auto-renew for another period. So, if you signed up for a 3 month subscription on August 15th, you have until November 15th to decline to renew your membership. Otherwise, we assume you're loving Secretly Society and want to continue.

OK, WHERE DO I SIGN UP?

You've come to the right place. Hit one of the orange buttons above to subscribe.

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