Live Review: Soft and Dumb at Golden Dagger, Chicago
After meeting at college in Urbana, Illinois, they gained a following by playing as many DIY shows as they could, often in houses. Ryan Doyle Elward went to see the band live in their natural habitat and found a band starting to come into their own.
‘Thumper’ becomes ‘Thillens’ and it’s unclear what’s a continuation of what as it all converges toward the music of Ice Age and Soft Kill. Out of Bed is an album constantly climaxing. It’s a gorgeous view of a crashing plane that evens out in the air, the moments of grace before falling again.
Soft and Dumb’s live presence fuses Pissed Jeans style drumming with the tenderness of Floristor Mothers, giving the performance symmetry. Their latest single ‘never wanna’ is similarly balanced. It’s a little more linear but retains much of that same hurry up/slow down kind of habit, being made of both busy and paced intervals.
It’s starts crystalline, grows fuzzier and cloudier and then circles back with momentum. A self-sustaining track, it is delinked from Out of Bed in a way that marks growth for the band, and possibly a new direction for their song structure and sound. Saved for last in the set and played the day before its release, ‘never wanna’ here is almost a denoucement, saying, this is where we’re headed.
r.d.e
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📷 Ryan Kuk
Best band going hands down!!
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