The Soft Pack – Strapped

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.