Band name nomenclature is a game, but a game that can be confusing, there are so many bands which simply change their names, so many bands which break up and reform with members from another band. Just like The Soft Pack, who were originally named the Muslims (don’t blame them for changing) and whose one member, the drummer Brian Hill, was in the band The Plot to blow up the Eiffel Tower, with the two guys now in this other band Crocodiles. I don’t know if you have followed me, but this is important to know where they are coming from, to understand the origin of their fast punk/post-punk, rocket-like songs.
The Soft Pack were headlining the evening at the Echoplex on Thursday night, and I found their short catchy tunes being a pleasing mix of so many things…things that, curiously, borrow as much as from the 60’s than the 80’s, things that have been sculpted into a sound, original and familiar at the same time.
With the obsessive engine-like guitar serving as a background for a hard dance beat, some songs (‘Parasites’ for example), moved like a fast road trip suddenly turned violent or even bad.
If most of their songs came from their last self-titled album or from The Muslim EP, they also performed what it seems a few new ones, like ‘Nerves’, obviously named like this because it sounded like the band The Nerves.
The upbeat dance beats were always present, even when the guitar was surfing, since, of course, we are never too far from the beach in San Diego where the band originates. Their very fast pace and Matt Lamkin’s vocals could make them deserve the punk etiquette, but there is much more than that, as their guitars also dig the psychedelic side at times, with repetitive lyrics, a little bit as if Jim Morrison had decided to have been more indie than classic rock. And other songs like ‘Answer to Yourself’ had this Cure-like bass line, without really staying in this territory during the whole song.
They came on stage around 11:30 pm, after three previous bands had played (although I saw only two), but people got just reanimated after this long wait and were bouncing along their infectious rhythms. But Matt Lamkin and Matty McLoughlin on guitars, David Lantzman on bass, and Brian Hill on drums were not here to do the small talking between their Stooges’ speed inspired acts, they were just playing, one song after another, and they did not seem to care about anything else.
Setlist:
‘Right and Wrong’
‘More Or Less’
‘Extinction’
‘Parasites’
‘Nerves’
‘C’Mon’
‘Pull Out’
‘Bright Side’
‘Hang Fire’
‘Faith man’
‘Beside Myself ‘
‘Mexico’
‘Answer To Yourself’
‘Gagdad’