The Secret History: "Johnny Anorak"

Stonewash jeans with Fjällräven Dis shirt? Check. Ticket for the match? In pocket. Sharpened pound coins to fling at foreign players? In wallet. Wrap of coke secured under watch strap? Check. Fluttering urge to bin it, run home, and swoon to your Stock Aitken Waterman CD? Check, mate and Kasparov. Yes, if your involvement in armed weekend horseplay is a front for your Kylie addiction, you need to catch up with Michael Grace Jr. and his new ensemble octet Secret History. The declassified parts of their public history run thus: having led indie-poppers My Favorite to a Pitchfork “best of decade” nod, Grace was sniffed out by the producer of Morrissey and David Bowie’s session guitarist’s daughter. All sounds a bit six degrees of the eighties but Grace—given a makeover by his friends from the UK glitterati and some tips on the correct way to prance—has emerged from Long Island eleven years later with a seven nation army behind him (one musician per nation). Their first conquest is the kind of easy target the UK best-dressed boys might annihilate: the anorak, a provincial klutz in weatherproof pastels with zero hope of spreading his gene pool. The Secret History, however, recruit this oddball as a friend, clearly keen to spread their own pool and show even the invisibles have a past.

And the best way to fill in said past is to unpick the knots of the present: a farcical terrace chant and thug refrain pull back for Lisa Ronson’s vocals, the intervening synthesizers and White Duke contact buzz causing hormones to mesh and align themselves. You’ll be one verse in before you realize that what began as a straight rip of the Manics’ “Peeled Apples” now stands on its own two feet, lightening nicely into an punch-the-air mix of beer and Bananarama. Ronson’s lines form a trunk for the underdog of the title to piss against, her polka dot voice exclaiming with glee “Hallelujah / Ha ha ha / You come and stand on every street corner like it’s a station of the cross / How do you carry what you’ve lost / Johnny…” It’s a strong hunk of sympathy for the unpopular coat and the poor bastard sealed inside of it, and so someone opens a Good Luck! greetings card for the final lap of the chorus. Johnny’s anorak gets to sparkle and cry and the Secret History’s post-pop is announced—now all they need to do is repeat it eleven times and their World That Never Was debut will win nods.