The Softies Pick Up Where They Left Off on The Bed I Made

To the uninitiated, a band like the Softies can only conjure up images of tender quietude and intimate emotion. Famously, that’s only partially accurate: Rose Melberg and Jen Sbragia certainly dialed back the volume by cutting out bass and drums, but their wielding of two electric guitars while singing crisp harmonies often made them a bit too loud for living room acoustic sets and a bit too quiet for big indie rock showcases. It’s this unconventional approach, inspired by legendary oddballs like Daniel Johnston, and their excitement to embrace vulnerability that led the Softies to become standouts within a budding Pacific Northwest twee-pop scene.

For the duration of this millennium, there’s been a Softies-shaped void that they’d fill once in a blue moon with live performances and even a recent tour with Tony Molina. As exciting as that’s proven, it’s not the same. But that has changed: Melberg and Sbragia, after years of dabbling in other projects and moving up the Pacific coast, the two best friends return on The Bed I Made, a refreshing comeback. The 14 tracks on the album touch on friendship, grief and love with simultaneous wonderment and wisdom—all while avoiding pitfalls often associated with return albums.

The Softies could have drawn from any emotional well. They could have mined their ‘90s experiences for familiar feelings and recast them in the same light they did in the band’s heyday, or they could have approached their subjects with an emphasized newfound wisdom associated with chronological distance from their prior selves. The duo refuses to do either. Melberg and Sbragia approach their emotions with the same curiosity as before, with a fresh appreciation for the depth of friendship and the interplay of disparate feelings. On The Bed I Made, love is grief, growth is sorrow and pride is friendship.

The format is familiar: crystal-clear lyrics, satisfying harmonies and guitar rumblings lift the songs to a dimension that only the Softies can reach together. “Go Back In Time” immediately revives their aesthetic approach with a song that feels like a thesis statement—something coated in nostalgia—but the Softies use the song to lament waning connections, centering longing without assigning too much direction. The Bed I Made is loaded with songs taken from Melberg and Sbargia’s emotional trajectories, broken down into their most fundamental parts and nearly devoid of direct reference. The Softies of the 21st century are all about shared affective experiences; getting to the root of what feelings matter and why helps make them immediately familiar to any listener. In an interview, Melberg identifies “When I Started Loving You” as a song she wrote about loving herself after dissolving Tiger Trap, but she intended for it to resemble all forms of admiration. It’s cheesy, concise and catchy.