The Whitest Boy Alive: "Keep A Secret"

It’s not exactly complicated. The conceit is simple: a versatile bass line, then a tight beat, some spare note-intensive guitar, and synths over top. But it’s just mixed so damn well, written so perfectly. You could describe “Keep A Secret,” and by extension the rest of the ridiculously consistent Rules, as literally Kings of Convenience with funky beats. But that would ignore the less describable tension and precision that makes the song so natural and propulsive, while simultaneously betraying a practiced interaction that was often missing from the Whitest Boy Alive’s less collaborative debut.

It’s precisely that balance that makes “Keep A Secret” such an unexpected success. Erlend Øye finds a perfect line between the raw inspiration of just making shit up with your friends and the technical work of making it interesting for everyone else. While in Kings of Convenience there was a strange beholdenness to the past in their reverent folk objects, his new funk fixation sounds limitless and pure, looking forward and settling only into grooves that could last forever.