The Soft Pack – Extinction : Album Reviews

Do not let the name fool you! San Diego’s The Soft Pack are anything but soft.

With their ultra-cool rapscallion demeanor, you can tell these guys mean business from the very first song. Formerly known as The Muslims, they soon grew tired of fielding questions solely related to the name, so a change to The Soft Pack it was. Known for the energetic live shows and genuinely likable on-stage persona’s, it seems to have been a great move to get rid of something that could potentially detract from their sound. Having said that, however, a fair bit of that attention does not appear to impeded their progress so far!

Along their slightly controversial careers, they’ve obviously been doing something right after managing supports for The Breeders, The Last Shadow Puppets, The Bloc Party, and playing a few shows across the UK with Franz Ferdinand earlier this year. And now with the release of debut album Extinction, The Soft Pack look more like further treading this track that has seen them come from relative obscurity to anti-glamour punk rockers in the blink of an eye.

Formerly The Muslims, The Soft Pack are now enjoying answering questions about their music.

Bright Side opens up much like a thematic overview of  Extinction, with its driving bass, jangly guitar riffs and wickedly cumbersome vocal lines. Brian Hill’s drumming must get a nod here too; offering much more precision than the recording gives him credit for.

American channels that inescapable teenage angst that reflects nothing but complete apathy, the interchanging between ‘A-meri-can, A-meri-cant’ dishing off enough unenthusiastic vibes to comfortably rival a classroom of self-loathing teenagers.

Title track Extinction is an empowering tale of an unworkable relationship coming to an end. Lyrics like ‘If you give me a gun, I’ll point it at you. If you think I’m the one, who has to answer to you’ make this anti-romantic severing of ties even more cutting and frighteningly real. Based over a simple progression of drum and surf-punk guitar chimes, this is a song that signifies a realization that it’s over – for good.

Beside Myself is easily the most accessible song on Extinction, offering a bright and sunny melody lightly sprinkled over an ominous bass and drum combination. The verse ebbs and flows until the final reaches of the end chorus where it really breaks out in unabashed raw enthusiasm.

One of the features of The Soft Pack is vocalist Matt Lamkin, whose adolescent geeky vocal stylings help their lo-fi punk sound from becoming just another sloppy punk experiment.

Although it’s been done before, it has rarely been done this well. Lamkin doesn’t have the same primal energy of Iggy, and falls short of the anti-establishment badness of Johnny Rotten, but overall, he appears none-to-fussed. It’s almost as though when they decided they wanted to be a band, Lamkin idled up and took the microphone, and that was it. Their sound is both vicious and delicate, resembling an honest sound, stripped back of any unnecessary aural clutter. Let’s hope they make it over here sometime soon!