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If seeing is believing, then Soft has to be taken on blind faith. While the band has technically been in existence for 4 years, live appearances have been both few and scattered. Instead, the five men who comprise Soft—(Johnny Reineck on vocals, Vincent Perini and Sam Wheeler on guitars, Dino Siampos on bass, and Chris Colley on drums)—have preferred to spend their time out of public view, crafting their debut album with the kind of obsessive care that most bands reserve for their third or fourth records.
Beginning September of 2003, while most Williamsburg bands were using ProTools plugins to sound like they were making records in their bedroom, Soft was formed to do just the opposite. They wanted to make big, bright, shiny pop songs. They wanted their songs to sound huge. And they wanted their songs played in arenas.
For a year, the band wrote music five nights a week—no live appearances—and from their tiny Brooklyn practice space, they wrote the songs that would eventually become the Soft EP.
Building on loose dance grooves, Soft took layers upon layers of shimmering guitar, added breathy melodies, and obsessively crafted them into perfect pop songs. While their approach to the studio was heavily inspired by Kevin Sheilds and My Bloody Valentine, Soft injected a new sense of pop savvy that owed more to INXS than the Jesus and Mary Chain.
And the bloggers loved it—Elbows Blog Aggregator called Soft “the most blogged-about band of 2005”. The EP went on to hit #4 on Insound.com’s best seller list. Soft’s first NYC appearance was at Irving Plaza and went on to open for Mark Gardner of Ride, Hard Fi, Favorite Sons, and Sons and Daughters.
In early 2005, Soft again retreated to their studio for to write and record and obsessively tweak their debut album. Gone Faded proves that, despite the band’s reclusive nature, Soft is no myth.
The eleven tracks serve as a bold and uncommonly melodic announcement of their arrival, from the radiant opening peals of the title track to the assured climax of “Hot Club.” The effort is audible, Should you choose to listen closely, but Gone Faded is not strictly intended for headphones. Soft’s aural pleasures, as it turns out, are remarkably simple and broadly appealing— skyscraping choruses to be played at Wembly, songs to be played on the radio. An album over 3 years in the making—Soft—Gone Faded. |
