Secret Boyfriend - Listener's Guide

Super useful compilation surveying the 15 or so years of highly prolific activity by North Caroline's Ryan Martin under his Secret Boyfriend moniker. I've not personally checked in with the Secret Boyfriend output since the record on Blackest Ever Black in 2016 (and consequently missed the Russian Tsarlag split in doing so), but Martin's not let that deter him, having churned out an impressive series of tapes via his Hot Releases imprint that in their own way speak of the undying vibrancy of the US underground. Despite that label's connection with noise music, and the varying sounds Martin has produced over the years, Listener's Guide is ostensibly a pop-oriented collection, fragile, mostly vocal-driven lo-fi confessionals built from a tumble of strummed guitars, drum machine linearity and whirring synth drone. On TikTok they call this kind of thing 'bedroom-pop', which might now come charged with all sorts of aesthetic misnomers and doesn't quite capture the breadth of imagination on display here (perhaps 'Kranky in a K-hole' might be a more attention grabbing summation?), but does do a good job in capturing the private universe feeling of Martin's vision - these are the kind of songs you make when you're alone in your room, off-the-clock and free to endlessly indulge a feeling. While Listener's Guide is helpful as both introduction and catch up, it's most revealing of a quietly determined act of world building that celebrates the introverted, the low-key, and the radically sincere, and entertains the idea that it might only be for the shadows that we might see the stars.