The Soft Pack
are generic indie goodness hailing from San Diego. They unashamedly wear their
influences on their sleeve and these influences are not the standard boring Joy
Division or Echo and the Bunny Men that are so prevalent in the 2014
incarnation of the genre. The Soft Pack stir up a punch bowl that combines The
Bodines, Weather Prophets, Sebadoh, Bob, The Teardrop Explodes, Haircut 100,
the Higsons, Inspiral Carpets, the Primitives and Mighty Mighty in a
mouth-wateringly straightforward concoction. It’s a fun, fruity and
effervescent vintage.
Sadly,
they’re almost certainly headed for the obscurity of our pages rather than the
real media of the NME or radio air play. They’re too wholesome, too standard
and have too much quality to engage with the proper music biz. And that’s a
really positive attribute. If you loved ‘Played’ and wonder why that kind of
music had to disappear, well it didn’t, it’s the sound of the Soft Pack.
All the
tracks are stonkers, but my personal favourites are the adrenaline fuelled
charms of ‘Chinatown’, the eighties throwback of ‘They Say’ and the Teardrop-esque
‘Tallboy’. Best of all is the strange hybrid of the Bodines and Serious
Drinking that is ‘Second Look’ resplendent with tooting horns and twanging
guitars.
A fantastic
album, a refreshing change and well worth searching out. Fingers crossed for a new
album in the near future.
