In the years since the Softies’ last album, Melberg played in bands like Brave Irene and Knife Pleats, but also dug deeper into her work as a singer-songwriter—releasing incredible, open-hearted records like 2006’s Cast Away the Clouds and 2009’s Homemade Ship, which had more in common with the melodic finesse of the Softies’ one-time tourmate Elliott Smith than Bay Area punk. The candor of her voice and unvarnished language became elemental, its own indie-pop vernacular. Melberg always seems to speak the language of mixtapes, the kind you make with a message: pinpointing precise feelings and stating them so directly and unmistakably that it might feel a little scary. On these new Softies songs, the storytelling is often richer and more visual, too—pink skies and a rose garden serve as markers of time; an old house’s quirks become solid—even when the lyrics are spartan. “Headphones” captures the duo’s daydream essence with the brevity of a Yoko Ono Grapefruit instruction: “Plug your headphones/Straight into my heart/Listen/Listen/I love you.” Many of the songs are in fact about songs themselves, how “country radio reminded me that you and I weren’t meant to be,” or how “every song is just a sigh, a little moment going by, a puff of smoke, a waterfall, a long-distance call.” As ever, an indie-pop song amplifies shy speech, a link in the chain of communication among introverts.
The most beautiful thing about this spare, glimmering music is the assurance and comfort it conveys even when voicing unbearable feelings. The strummed mini-anthem “Tiny Flame” seems to focus microscopically on a relationship that never took flight, but it zooms out too, with guttural girl-group yearning. “It started with a tiny flame/And ended in tears/I hadn’t felt that way in years,” Sbragia sings longingly, anticipating the lingering blow of the rupture. “Baby, when you think of me/Don’t forget/We could have been something.” Those words cut deeper sung from adulthood. But, from the Softies’ wise vantage, there’s also greater strength in a new beginning. “Set a fire, let it burn, and start again,” Sbragia sings, and with help from a friend and a song, she does.
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