Hi My Name Is Ryan "secrets" album review in Suave citation

"Some things in life just don’t get better: herpes comes to mind, amputated limbs, The Thong Song, etc. It’s a sad but true fact of life, I’m sorry, everyone’s sorry, but we trudge on despite it all and hope it’s not our turn next on the pit-bull attack or draino-heart-injection express way. 

That said I’d take an acid bath before subjecting myself to Ryan Avery’s latest explosive diarrhea burst, “Secrets” again. Rude Ryan is one of those things that just hasn’t gotten better and most certainly wasn’t good to start with. I suppose this places him somewhere in the nether regions of musical/artistic/conceptual piss play fetishists whose record you couldn’t tack onto a free meth blowout in South Phoenix as a promotional stocking stuffer.

“Secrets” is some form of anti-apologia to his ex-friends, local detractors, and YOU, people of Earth. The audio equivalent of a grown man squealing “nanny nanny boo boo” at you while masturbating after he just kicked over your birthday cake and threw your grandma into a blast furnace. Some sort of wannabe Andy Kaufman-esq anti-art worship that missteps so hard its ankle snaps. As far as I can tell Avery is playing off some sort of reputation he’s been maintaining in the Downtown Phoenix scene. I specify because he explains he has no presence in the Tempe scene in an instructional pamphlet that came with the tape as the result of the Tempe scene not wanting him around, or something. It’s all very vague. Maybe only he is aware of it..

Our hero is obviously very frustrated on this tape over a long list of fuck-ups committed in the last three years, one of which is apparently his own marriage, or at least it’s not explicitly clear due to the 7th grade level tongue-in-cheek tone of the liner notes, regardless he includes a sound clip of his nuptials INCASE YOU MISSED. Somehow Avery landed on the notion that the best course of action for exercising his demons would be field recording himself torturing cats and singing a capella anti-songs about tits and pissing in sinks. Whether or not this is Rude Ry-Dawgs idea of revenge or a comeback attempt is unclear but the whole tape seems like a long process of him smashing his face against a wall and asking it to appreciate it on account of it’s honesty and lack of “coolness,” to use his terminology. There’s also two soundbites of him and his friend Todd or Michael slamming on a poetry slam (INCASE YOU MISSED). Followed by a “studio” quality repeat on the next side.

This is the type of humor low-rent Harmony Korrine types get into, even then ranking it among the aesthetic quality of Gummo or Trash Humpers is a generous line of credit… All this aside here I am at 5 AM on a Tuesday hammering this out for no other reason other than I’m bored, between jobs, and have been pretty laid out from eating presumably tainted guacamole. So maybe this is the appropriate soundtrack for the kind of day/week/year I’ve been having. It still isn’t appreciated however, just another bite in this baby vom on sandpaper sandwich."
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-RCC