Louis XIV, The Best Little Secrets Are Kept: Albums I Just Love So Much

I understand the negative consequences of losing entire archives of writing and journalism every time a website disappears. But whenever it’s a site I wrote for, my reaction is more like Ruby Dee watching Sal’s burn down in Do The Right Thing. Objectively, I know I put some half-decent text-for-thought on the internet in the ‘00s. But, emotionally, I’d appreciate all evidence of my 20s erased from the public record entirely. Too much glib naivete, too much clueless cruelty and showing my ass, too much try-hard, passive-aggressive, defensive everything. 

So why the hell would I announce that I still enjoy Louis XIV? A band that was too transparently chauvinist for most rock writers even in the ‘00s? I’m profoundly embarrassed for my tone-deaf defenses of R. Kelly twenty years ago, when I’d foolishly compare his violent predation with ‘70s rock excess to dignify enjoying his passionately sung, inane sex metaphors. Shouldn’t I leave these dandies who sang “Aw, chocolate girl! You’re looking like something I want!” behind with the American apparel ads, the Suicide Girls and the times a Gawker contributor wondered in print why anyone would publish me ever? (If you don’t know what I’m talking about, or totally forgot, thank you and thank you.)

Believe me, I understand if Louis XIV is a band you have absolutely no time for. When I tried to explain the vicarious appeal of Mad Men for younger, equally feminist audiences, my Mom responded she’d had enough of the early ‘60s the first time around. Enjoying violent movies as some kind of cathartic entertainment is valid, and so is having zero desire to watch films about criminal bloodlust. What follows is an attempt to distinguish The Best Little Secrets Are Kept from mindless exploitive puerility. But wry nuance, self-awareness and musical craft aren’t inherently saving graces when a dude flicks his tongue at you. You don’t have to like it, and you don’t have to tolerate it. In this world, you don’t even have to like vegetables.

But if you’re curious why a guy so fond of handwringing and moral arguments would rank an album whose cover is the track listing written on a naked woman’s back over Joni Mitchell’s Blue (though not above Hejira!) on his Top 400 Albums Of All Time, I’ll do my best to explain. 

For those who either never heard of these guys or have blocked it out, Louis XIV actually began as a lightweight Americana band named Convoy. While San Diegoans Jason Hill and Brian Karscig had no less a right to cornpone affectations than Canadians Robbie Robertson and Rick Danko, their obvious enthusiasm for mellotron and analog studio tricks failed to make their genre exercises otherwise remotely memorable. 

After Convoy fell apart, Hill came up with a concept - or at least a shtick - that fit the glam fun he was having in his home studio. Randy dandy, haughty naughty vocals with natural echo, punchy guitar leads and other tricks taken from Tony Visconti productions. But where Suede and Velvet Goldmine celebrated glam as a scene of androgynous forward thinking, Hill and a returning Karscig were unabashed about playing boys fascinated by girls, using horrendous pick-up lines, crowing about conquests and flaunting kink. In the ‘90s, rock was shy about its heteronormativity. With emo and nu-metal, it was agonized. Popped onto alt-radio playlists amid nu-wavers like Strokes and the Killers, Louis XIV was uniquely, loudly self-impressed. 

The band’s blues chops are more attention-getting than their lyrical stance on the self-titled 2003 CD they sold on the road, with longer instrumental passages that highlight the initial influence of the White Stripes. But on The Best Little Secrets Are Kept, released on Atlantic just over a year later, their aristocratic accents no longer recalled Jack White’s, and guitars would only briefly distract from the shouted sex rhymes. While wildly leaping over the actual level of profanity on the album (and if there’s homophobia here, I’ve missed it), Pitchfork’s scathing review captures just how obnoxiously unwelcome these guys came off if you’d had more than enough of retro-rock and cocky cocksmanship in 2005.

But as a romantic late-bloomer on a belated Bon Scott kick at the time, one more excited by Pitbull’s early songs with Lil Jon than MIA’s with Diplo, I wasn’t going to kick these guys off the stereo just for sex-obsession. Besides, underneath the bravado (a place few were compelled to look), I noticed it was the female characters that referred to the singer as “bitch” rather than the other way around. “I looked into your eyes/ and pushed your buttons and levers/ you sipped your tea and turned with glee and kindly said ‘whatever.’” Whether found cringeworthy or comic, the slavering banter of “Paper Doll” ends with “and if you want clean fun, go fly a kite.” These were songs that acknowledged the sexual agency of all involved, hinting that these preening sexual libertines knew they were just slutty little fuckboys, lucky to have nice suits and long hair. 

If the crass catcalls and cartoon s&m of first single “Finding Out True Love Is Blind” didn’t repulse you, “A Letter To Dominque” gets mean about a local slattern’s likely murder (“now there's no one to watch her TV”) over an uncredited rip of T. Rex’s “Metal Guru” so shameless they even ape the backing vocals. Everything before and after either shouts for sex and slurs about getting some, at least until the penultimate “All The Little Pieces”, where Karscig whimpers about losing the script over Spiders From Mars grandiosity. Then comes Hill, smirking over ominous acoustic guitar and strings on “Ball Of Twine”: “God save the Kinks/ and the music from the big pinks/ cuz sonny boy, he's better than you think.” For all the sexual shits and giggles, these guys just wanted to be the kings of rock mountain, early FM radio-style. And they had cause to think they could!

While nobody called contemporary alt-rock “indie sleaze” in the ‘00s, I can see why the kids have latched onto that handle since. What distinguishes the whole Meet Me In The Bathroom era from other “new wave” moments is the subtext of gentrification and privilege around prep school boys and Oberlin grads pouring beer on themselves for the delight of bloggers and start-up employees, in neighborhoods considerably less edgy than in decades past. Just as “Yacht Rock” and “emo” blithely exaggerate qualities not inherent respectively in “adult contemporary” or “post-hardcore,” “indie sleaze” calls out the choice to be flamboyantly more trashy than necessary, in cities that don’t want to be trashy at all. While the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ Fever To Tell captures the energy at its most romantic (I’ll revisit that album another day), The Best Little Secrets feels almost ahead of its time in its more cynical framing.

Sincerely trying to crush it as ironic cartoons became a burden for Louis XIV once the world failed to play ball, not unlike what happened to Urge Overkill in the ‘90s (another beyond-fake act I can’t help but love). Maybe you need an unquestionable musical genius like Eddie Van Halen and a committed clown like David Lee Roth to get away with brilliant bad taste on a massive level. Razzed by the cool kids and waking up among the wild ones, XIV didn’t release a follow-up until 2008’s Slick Dogs And Ponies, an album still full of musical fireworks but understandably more obtuse at the mic. 

Though the band only split for a few years before the Killers invited them to open some shows in 2012, only the occasional show and a 2020 digital single has followed. Hill and Karscig’s obvious studio skills have given them plenty of job opportunities in the years since, with the former responsible for the music on Mindhunter and other projects one or fewer degrees from David Fincher. Hill also produced and played bass on the last New York Dolls reunion album. His sound-sense was a perfect fit, but unfortunately arrived as David Johansen & Syl Sylvain ran out of songs. I don’t really want a Louis XIV reunion, anyway. I just wish gainful employment for the guys who gave me this short, sharp, shocking album, assuming their fantasies weren’t cloaking actual pig or predator behavior. As another stupid character once said, “what’s wrong with being sexy?”

As hinted above, The Best Little Secrets Are Kept is at 120 on my Top 400 Albums Of All Time. Feel free to pretend I didn't remind you of this album. But if you want to say something about it, or anything else, the place to do so is anthonyisright at gmail dot com.