Softies, The "Winter Pageant" RE LP (2024)

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.