‘Secret To Tell’ is built around one of the least admirable and most entertaining human impulses: knowing something you absolutely shouldn’t repeat, then immediately wanting to repeat it.
Here, Utah alt-rock trio The Sunmills take that weakness and push it into deliciously ridiculous territory, turning gossip into the engine of a track that feels mischievous, self-aware and knowingly mean around the edges. The inspiration came from the childhood rhyme “Secret secrets are no fun, secret secrets hurt someone”, but the band’s version is far less virtuous: what’s the point of knowing a secret if you never get to tell anybody?
But instead of moralising about trust, The Sunmills are fascinated by the guilty pleasure of breaking it. ‘Secret To Tell’ imagines the kind of person whose sympathy lasts only as long as it takes you to leave the room, someone already mentally assembling the guest list for the next retelling before you have even finished confessing.
The band have long paired hard-driving alt-rock with funkier grooves and an ironic streak, and ‘Secret To Tell’ leans comfortably into that character-driven side of their writing. There’s something almost theatrical about the premise, with the song less interested in private guilt than in the gleeful performance of pretending to be trustworthy.
After the long gestation of The Art of Burning Bridges, The Sunmills’ newer material has arrived far more quickly, and ‘Secret To Tell’ feels energised by that momentum. The riffs still carry weight, but the writing is sharper, funnier and more willing to turn flawed behaviour into entertainment.