Surfin' The O.C.

Obligatory start for any article about the following band: yeah, they had a name change. Because you can call your band Fucked Up, Holy Fuck and so on but not The Muslims. Alas, this is no longer an exciting subject. Go to Wikipedia/Lasfm/MySpace and get informed. It’s all free. We should move on to better things like, I don’t know, the debut album. That’s right, The Soft Pack’s self-titled debut.

A sunny, breezy debut from a band lazily tagged as garage rock and thrown in the bottom less pit of garage revivalists. While it does seem like they borrow from The Strokes at times, for instance (More or Less’s guitar veers into an Is This It? world), it’s in fact the Velvet Underground that The Soft Pack look at for reference (there is no denying the shambolic performances are VU-based). They hold on tight to their love for Modern Lovers and Class of ‘77 US punk: it’s Marquee Moon the album that made the difference.

Which doesn’t mean they don’t go beyond, even if it’s just for a bit of The Feelies (Flammable) or Black Lips (Pull Out). And what makes The Soft Pack different from the likes of typical garage revivalists is the infusions of surf-rock and anything beach pop that came out of the band’s home state, California (Mexico is incredibly beach-y). And all the summer vibes are perfect for this solid, fun, fresh 30 minutes album