2014 Schedule
Interactive: March 7–11  •  Film: March 7–15  •  Music: March 11–16

The Wet Secrets

66193

A five-piece rock'n'roll dance band that play the kind of music you could expect to hear if The Stranglers piggybacked Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass through the Rose Parade. Swampy basslines, primal drumming, dancing ladies with brassy hornstacks, keys, congas, & vocal harmonies galore.

Formed on a dare by Lyle Bell, Trevor Anderson and Kim Rackel, the bass and horn heavy quintet burst onto the scene with 2006’s A Whale of a Cow CD. Written and recorded within one week of the band’s formation, it was a clarion call to anyone within earshot that The Wet Secrets had arrived.

2007 saw the release of the fuzzed up Rock Fantasy full length. CBC Radio 3’s fervent support of the track “Secret March” landed the song at the #2 slot on the national CBC charts, won them a Bucky, and brought the band international acclaim. Festival touring soon followed – including mandatory stops at Austin’s SXSW and CMJ in New York – as did a slot at Edmonton’s inaugural Sonic Boom festival.

Free Candy is the long-awaited third album from Edmonton’s dapper pop primates, The Wet Secrets. After a four year hiatus spent focusing on other projects (Anderson with Dirt City Films and Bell in Shout Out Out Out Out), the band has reconvened and wryly crafted a deceptively sunny new album, to be released independently in Canada on February 4, 2014.

Free Candy marks a dramatic leap forward for the band in both songwriting and attitude. With the addition of local psych-pop wizard Paul Arnusch (Faunts/Whitsundays) and wunderkind Emma Frazier, The Wet Secrets have returned determined to seize the brass ring and stomp the world in the face/balls. (Figuratively/literally). This new resolve now comes with a more pensive pen, eschewing tongue-in-cheek ribaldry for a well conceived quasi-concept album about sex, death and the human condition. Material with more gravitas perhaps, but still smartly dressed in the frantic pop trappings that is uniquely The Wet Secrets.

Olé!

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