Details: The Softies "Winter Pageant" RE LP (K Records, 2024). Black vinyl, new stock, sealed.

Description: "Amidst the popular shouting and mystical-philosophical dramatics of their female contemporaries, the Softies make music that is barely audible, delicately lovelorn, and mostly unknown. Like "It's Love," the Softies' debut LP, Winter Pageant is a collection of songs that begin after the romance has ended. Their sound is intimate and fragile -- guitars like baby birds and voices as brightly immaterial as sunlight shimmering on water. The rare songs that celebrate a love that has not yet died -- "The Best Days" and "Excellent" -- have the same wistful air as the rest. They eulogize a perfect moment, preserve it as a tragic souvenir, before the inevitable end. Despite the melancholy tone, there is something hopeful in the Softies' resignation, a faith in perfect moments that is as strong as the knowledge of love's frailty. There is no recrimination in these songs and no bitterness. From their own intimate distress, Jen Sbragia and Rose Melberg have chosen to produce neither manifestoes nor rallying cries, but sad lullabies for the amorously disenfranchised. In their unassuming way, the Softies remind us that the personal need not always be political, that sometimes personal is enough."

Grade: M (new stock)

TRACK LISTING:

01. Pack Your Things And Go
02. So Sad
03. Over
04. No One At All
05. Tracks And Tunnels
06. Excellent
07. My Foolish Way
08. The Best Days
09. Fortune
10. Splintered Hands
11. About You
12. Anywhere But Here
13. Winter Pageant
14. Make Up Your Mind