The Soft Pack: The Soft Pack

Music Reviews The Soft Pack
The Soft Pack: The Soft Pack

California quartet sports new name, old sound

Familiarity often gets a bad rap in modern music. Granted, most every standard-issue rock ’n’ roll band will bring to the seasoned listener’s mind any number of previous standard-issue rock ’n’ roll bands, but incorporating one’s influences as opposed to simply aping them is a special kind of science.

Enter The Soft Pack. The California foursome once known as The Muslims (changed for reasons you can probably imagine) operates within the grand tradition of melody-gorging rock acts before it, from The Strokes to Spoon to The Modern Lovers. But where many of its contemporaries settle for mere derivation, The Soft Pack uses its instantly catchy references as jumping-off points, taking songs to unexpected places replete with guitar-and-keyboard-led spazzouts and fist-pumping, shout-along choruses. Like meeting an old friend after years apart, The Soft Pack is surprisingly, comfortably familiar.

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