ATP! Album Review: Artist Vs Poet - Keep Your Secrets

For the longest time, Artist Vs Poet was viewed as nothing more than a YouTube cover band, a fact that they addressed with a YouTube cover. But that was then, and this is now and AVP is proving that they are so much more than a band that can recreate other artists’ music.

Keep Your Secrets, the band’s first full-length with Joe Kirkland at the helm, offers up exactly what you’d expect, and want, from a band considered to be power-pop. With catchy melodies and Kirkland’s sugary vocals masking the sometimes scathing lyrics (“Because life’s a bitch, and I don’t love ya, who told you that? You’ll find another.”) Keep Your Secrets is a great way to prove that they can do their own thing. It’s upbeat when it needs to be, and slows down when it needs to, giving listeners the perfect amount of give and take that an album should dole out.

It isn’t a perfect album, mind you. While it is a good listen, it isn’t one that inspires listeners to hit the repeat button, but it is a good start. The band is at a great place for growth, and it is only a matter of time before they dish out that album that fans will have trouble taking out of their CD players/ iPods/ turntables/ whatever.

How can I be so certain of this fact? The album’s closing track, 'Stay Strong', gives a glimpse of the depth that AVP is hiding up their sleeve. Singing about the struggles of people-- a girl who’s father doesn’t love her, a couple walking through a protest upon getting an inferred abortion, a girl who cuts and a boy who’s friend died - Kirkland pleads for them to stay strong. Accompanied by an acoustic guitar and a sprinkling of drums, his voice bleeds with emotion and doesn’t come off as forceful or as a gimmick. This band truly is begging for listeners to stay strong through all their struggles. It is a highlight on this album, and a highlight from this band as a whole.

Keep Your Secrets is far from being considered the best album of 2013, but it certainly does hint that some day, and some day soon, AVP will be giving you an album of that calibre.

3/5

Victoria Patneaude

Keep Your Secrets is out now via iTunes.