My sophomore year at Columbia College Chicago my suitemate Pat and I had pretty much the exact same music taste. He introduced me to a ton of great music. One band I forgot about until recently was The Secret Lives of The Freemasons. I had a few of their songs but never fully listened to their second LP, and unfortunately their last, Weekend Warriors (2008). I first heard the songs Chug and Leave and Mascara from Pat. It definitely sounded like pop-punk band with a little hint of The Fully Down. This band seriously got shafted and put on the back burner. Warrior is such an amazing album and they stand apart from other bands in the genre. Guitarists Jim Debardi and Tucker Ensley hit signature high notes that are used in most of the songs. Secret Lives has such a great energy in their live shows that most bands need more of nowadays.
Painting Monsters is a song that is easily repeatable. It is a personal song that singer Brien Worsham wrote starting with the line, “miserable hospital bed please don’t you take my friend.” This is the stand out song on the album without a doubt. When Monsters hits the 2:18 mark the volume on my stereo goes from room level to annoying neighbor status. Then Worsham sings, “I won’t forget one thing, still remember your face. Well I know you are home.” Amazing.
The one music video that came from this album is the track Life Begins At 40oz. One of the biggest no-nos I learned in film school was to not waste time in a film, short, music video (or whatever the content might be) on showing people getting ready in the morning. In this case it adds nothing to the music video. The first thirty seconds show all of the band members getting ready in the mirror. The second half of the video has more thought put in than the first part. Also, yet another disgrace done to the band, at the 1:13 mark in the video the editor didn’t even bother to sync Wosham’s singing with the music. The band deserves more than this. The performance part of the video at the end also doesn’t convey even half of their energy in a typical live show by Secret Lives.
Apart from the label not promoting the band, Secret Lives came around in the wrong time. When this album came out the majority of other pop-punk bands were trying to veer off the sound. Fall Out Boy came out with Folie a Deux that featured Lil Wayne and partly produced by Pharrell Williams. Forgive Durden went a completely different route and wrote a musical, Razia’s Shadow (insanely amazing album), that sounded like a combination of Aladdin and In Defense of the Genre. Panic at the Disco came out with Pretty. Odd. that was more on par with The Beatles then their previous album A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out. In 2011, the number of pop-punk bands that started to arise was incredible. Had this album been released in the past year it might have had a higher reception than in 2008.
I highly recommend picking up the album Weekend Warriors. This album will most definitely go down as a favorite.
Check out the album on Spotify.
Buy the album here. DO IT!
