The Secret Beach - We were born here, what's your excuse?
Victory Pool
Released August 23rd, 2024
A little bit Dylan, a little bit Beach Boys, a little bit Shauf, but with a voice all its own. We were born here, what’s your excuse? is the latest and greatest from Winnipeg’s The Secret Beach, a loose assembly of folky collaborators centred around singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist Micah Erenberg. It was one of those classic Pacific Northwest shoulder season days when I listened to We were born here for the first time. The weather spasming with quick bursts of rain, wind, hot sun, I sat in my glassed-in balcony, kicked my feet up, and popped in my headphones. Maybe it was the combination of weather, mood, and music, but I can’t remember the last time an album grabbed me that hard that fast. Those first vocals like a gut-punch of nostalgia. The warm woollen texture of the sounds, the snippets of stories and wry off-handed jokes, the genuine and pervasive joy of it all.
While the Canadian prairies are mostly a mystery to me, there’s a particular flavour to the music that grows there that I find intoxicating. A kind of a dreamlike wistful strangeness that’s both subtly unsettling and achingly familiar. We were born here has this really lovely slantwise fuzziness to it, like a slightly too-stoned friend bending your ear with their latest grandly looping run-on stories.
A quick, somewhat scattershot list of album highlights: “Blame Manny”, an odd, Wes Anderson-y fable of mistaken identity and unfortunate events; “L.A. Haircut”, a hazy and sun-drenched ode to love and optimism; “If You Don’t Love Me, Let Me Go”, a poignant slice of echoing 60s heartbreak, soothing and soulful. Also, possibly my favourite part of the album: its length. 15 songs in just under 42 minutes. It’s great. Each song ends right where you want it to. Call it musical portion control. I can crush 15 of these bite-sized treats and come back wanting more (is that portion control?).
The excellence on display here isn’t only Erenberg’s. The accompanying musicians include country duo Kacy & Clayton and fellow Winnipeggers (are we really settled on that as the demonym folks?) Liam Duncan (who you may know as the always excellent Boy Golden) and FONTINE. The Secret Beach gang for We were born here is rounded off with legendary producer Rob Fraboni, who produced for the Beach Boys, the Stones, and, most importantly, for Bob Dylan & The Band’s Planet Waves, Erenberg’s main inspiration on this record.
As far as I’m concerned, the only useful metric when it comes to art is the degree to which something does what it’s trying to do. By that standard, I have no criticisms to offer here. This album is so obviously the product of excessive care matched with genuine talent and earnest vision. Erenberg and Co. should be sincerely proud of creating something this wonderful. What more can you ask for? It’s potent, it’s delightful, and it deserves whatever time and attention you can spare.
- Josiah Snell