EP: Softcult – ‘Year Of The Snake’

Like the serpent that it’s named after, Year Of The Snake, the second EP from Canadian duo Softcult is a determined effort to shed the skin of past trauma, reject toxic behaviours and make space for healing.

Informed by their experiences of sexism and objectification as young women in the music industry, twin siblings Phoenix and Mercedes Arn Horn’s debut offering Year Of The Rat (2021) was a collection of bittersweet, grunge-infused sounds that soothed the sting of a painful past. On their follow up record Year Of The Snake, Softcult continue to dissect these difficult memories, but with a renewed focus on how they can use them as the foundations for true self autonomy.

A seething take down of the all-too-familiar excuse “Boys will be boys,” opener ‘BWBB’ sends a direct message to enablers of toxic “bro-code”. Heavily distorted riffs and crashing percussion drive home the message “Boys will be boys / but these boys are men / and these girls didn’t ask / to be touched by them.” It sits in powerful contrast to closing track ‘Uzumaki’, a heavy lament about the “vicious cycle” of PTSD caused by the behaviours the pair attack in ‘BWBB’.

Softcult’s hard earned emotional resilience shines through on ‘Spit It Out’ and ‘Gaslight’. The first is a brooding extrapolation on rejecting unconscious bias, whilst the second is an urgent, shadowy exploration of that “sinking feeling” of self doubt in an unbalanced relationship. On the more introspective ‘House Of Mirrors’, the pair channel their fears of falling short through swirling riffs and soft dual vocals, whilst ‘Perfect Blue’ is a melodic reflection on compromising your identity to please others.

Antagonistic and tender in equal measure, Softcult’s Year Of The Rat is a melodic reckoning, urging listeners to peel away the remnants of self-doubt, trust their instincts and to allow themselves the time and space to heal.

Listen to Sofcult’s new EP Year Of The Rat here

Follow Softcult on bandcamp, Spotify, Instagram, Facebook & Twitter

Kate Crudgington
@KCBobCut

 

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LISTEN: Sophia – ‘Strong For Two’

‘Strong For Two‘, the latest offering from Rotterdam based singer songwriter Sophia, is a reflective track which popped just the right spring in my step as I took my first strides into 2022. 

With lyrics like “Please don’t be afraid / I get lonely too / there’s no need for shame / you can own your truth”, Sophia shows herself to be he a strong lyricist with an observational and bravely personal outlook. Frequently inviting us to embrace our vulnerability, line by line, Sophia cultivates such a bond with her listener that each verse comes to feel like the warming layers of a good hug.

Complementing the lyrics is a neat and upbeat sauntering rhythm which hints at the R’n’B influences on Sophia’s work. Her ability to vocally switch tempo and tone throughout the song also makes the track feel like a journey, like I’m being taken by the hand into the middle of the dance floor – or maybe just the middle of myself. The song closes with the appearance of several new voices speaking the reaffirming words “You know where to find me”. This surprising touch adds an exciting female flourish to the song which offers a genuine sense that we really are all in this together: a track for the New Year truly. 

Tutku Barbaros
@tutkubarbaros

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ALBUM: Cate Le Bon – ‘Pompeii’

You awake, eyes wild, dreams of Pompeii still flashing through your mind. It’s dark outside, what time is it? A rhythm shuffles over the horizon, an unidentified pulse of percussion and a shambling couple of wind instruments. Pompeii, Cate Le Bon’s sixth album, has begun, with ‘Dirt on the Bed’.

Yet again, she has created a remarkable, singular work. Pompeii is continuously rewarding, an album to return to again and again until it swallows you into its world. Like its artwork, a version of the Tim Presley painting that served as the central inspiration for the entire project, it possesses an aged, grainy feel in spite of its fresh originality. The sound is science fiction. As if from a parallel 80s, it is drenched in synths while evading the worn conventions of synth pop, instead assimilating those sounds into the Cate Le Bon style.

The brilliant ‘French Boys’ is punctuated by a beautiful steel pan hook that is mechanical and melancholy, creaking with the sad nostalgia of an abandoned oil rig in some post-apocalyptic landscape. Later tunes like the momentous ‘Cry Me Old Trouble’ develop walls of synths that provide epic and strange backdrops to the lyrics, complementing their tone perfectly.

Le Bon’s writing builds on the vocabulary of the ancient and the spiritual which she introduced to her work on her previous album, Reward. It constitutes perhaps the best example to date of her ability to create affecting lyrics out of abstract emotive language. Lines like “cry me old trouble”, “my heart broke a century”, “raise a glass in a season of ash and pour it over me”, they have that Symbolist combination of familiarity and mystery. Like a dream, her writing makes some unconscious sense even when individual elements evade comprehension.

Recent Cate Le Bon albums have felt terrestrial in their experimentation, each album conveying a kind of landscape. Crab Day was shingly, coastal, Reward was mountainous and sublime. By comparison, this album feels like it takes place on a swampy exoplanet, with thicker air and a slightly stronger gravitational force. In other words, Cate Le Bon has broken loose from Earth and is operating from a world of her own, free from any obvious external reference point and working according only to her original logic.

The closer, ‘Wheel’, provides a cyclical end to the album, an approximate reprise of ‘Dirt on the Bed’ with a palette expanded on the basis of all that we’ve gained through the 9-song track list. Only Le Bon can bound this sound-world, can make sense of it and condense it into an ordered and beautiful album. She is yet to make a bad record, and this might well be her finest work yet.

Order your copy of Cate Le Bon’s new album Pompeii here (released 4th February)

Follow Cate Le Bon on bandcamp, Spotify, Twitter, Instagram & Facebook

Photo Credit: Cate Le Bon

Lloyd Bolton
@franklloydwleft
@lloyd_bolton

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Track Of The Day: Tanya Tagaq – ‘Colonizer’

A powerful statement against centuries of colonisation aimed directly at the perpetrators, Canadian avant-garde artist Tanya Tagaq has shared her latest single ‘Colonizer’. Taken from her recent album Tongues, on which she explored themes of social and political exploitation with distinctive flair, the track is a commanding, brutal listen that reduces five hundred years of colonising history into four words: “Oh. You’re. Guilty. Colonizer.”

An award-winning improvisational singer, composer and best-selling author from Ikaluktutiak, Tagaq’s work has been recognised by the Order of Canada, Polaris Music Prize and the JUNO Awards. Described as “an original disruptor,” she confronts the horrors of inequality on a global and personal scale, seeking to erode the foundations of unjust systems through her pulverizing soundscapes, elastic vocals and spoken word. Her latest track ‘Colonizer’ epitomises these talents. Punctuated by Tagaq’s gasps for breath and the lyrical mantra “Oh. You’re. Guilty. Colonizer,” it ripples with righteous anger and defiance.

“Everyone is responsible for the system that is in place right now; those who benefit from the genocide of Indigenous people are still guilty,” Tagaq told The Line of Best Fit in a recent interview. She’s enhanced her message further in the potent accompanying video for ‘Colonizer’. Directed by Leah Fay Goldstein and Peter Dreimanis, the footage shows the destruction of the symbols and the perpetrators of the residential school system. You can donate to the Indian Residential School Survivors Society featured in the visuals here.

Watch the video for ‘Colonizer’ below.

Follow Tanya Tagaq on bandcamp, Spotify, Twitter, Instagram & Facebook

Kate Crudgington
@KCBobCut

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