Rebekah Gilbert is Done Keeping Secrets
- Roots Magazine
- 45 minutes ago
- 2 min read
Rebekah Gilbert has been releasing a steady stream of singles since the beginning of the year, starting with a cover of Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy” and following that up with, what is for her, a rock-flavored tune, “Somebody Else’s House.” “Secret Keeper” is the third single and the title track from an upcoming 7-song EP.
“Secret Keeper” continues to explore the fuller sound of the previous singles, softening the Nashville country influence to reveal something a little closer to mainstream. The song rests on an ambient cushion of keyboard, organ, and piano, and electric guitars sweeten the background of it in the same way they haunt the shadowy corners of “Crazy.” The acoustic guitar has been the instrumental focal point of Gilbert’s music since forever, but here it sits just a notch or two below the piano, driving the rhythm with the bass and drums. “Secret Keeper” doesn’t have the country-rock edge of “Somebody Else’s House,” but it builds its own kind of intensity, swelling in the end to a melody played from what sounds like a cello.
A former Christian, Gilbert actually started in Christian music with her 2012 EP, Captured. Since 2022, Gilbert’s songs have often centered on the truth versus the appearance of truth, a theme at the forefront of her new single. Whereas “Somebody Else’s House” is a cutting exposure of people living two lives, “Secret Keeper” comes off with more empathy as something like a “doubter’s prayer,” confessing that the truth is the person underneath the façade. It will be interesting to see if Gilbert’s music eventually finds ideological independence or if her reckoning of the truth will always depend on a façade that covers it.
Reviewed by Christopher Raley