Album Review: The Grates, Secret Rituals (for The Music Network)

17 June 2011

by Poppy Reid

For their third album, Secret Rituals, The Grates left sunny Brisbane to hole up in an apartment in Brooklyn, N.Y. They arrived hoping the city would rub its cold hands on them and take them from garage pop to dizzying layers of energetic epiphanies. Unfortunately the city inspired drummer, Alana Skyring to quit the band and enrol at the Institute of Culinary Education in Manhattan.

After 18 months, a hermit-inducing blizzard and the help of producer Gus Van Go- Patience Hodgson, John Patterson and stand-in drummer Ben Marshall have delivered an album solid enough to write home about.

With tracks like the coquettishly sexual first single Turn Me On and the modishly reaching With You, the Brisbane band may have ditched the longstanding comparisons to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs for good. Don’t get me wrong, there’s still enough Lalala’s and whoa oh’s to satiate long-time fans, but with the addition of layered keys, gravel-fuelled guitar lines and - wait for it - a bass guitar, Secret Rituals shows enough growth without losing the band’s playful drama.

Welcome To The Middle opitimises The Grate’s departure from sophomore record Teeth Lost, Hearts Won. Hodgson trills nursery rhyme lyrics over a detailed structure that takes it from a 21^st centuryRing a Ring O’ Roses to a standout track that’s as wholesome as it is facetious.

The biggest surprise on the record comes in final track, Moving Onwhere Hodgson takes on a somber vocal with Patterson’s hollow strumming ending the album on a low note. For a band that’s known for their feverish live show, tracks like this one and the loss of Skyring do evoke a sense that the manic energy the band embroiled as a live act has been heavily altered.

However, there's also a feeling this will work largely in their favour. Unlike The Grates’ earlier work, Secret Rituals isn’t all sugary-pop and parroting lyrics; for every effervescent track there is a more brindled treat which unravels the bubblegum stuck to your teeth and travels down the gullet quite nicely.

Secret Rituals is out now through Universal Music and Dew Pocess.