Soft like the Macpac puffer jacket I'm wearing right now, so cozy and warm with its duck down and Pertex Microlight lining? Soft like the marshmallow-y sole of a Yeezy Boost sneaker, hyper-inflated in value by shoe fanatics on a speculator driven e-market? Or maybe just Soft like some dude's flaccid dick? Listening to PHF's new album of synth-drenched slowjams suggests all three and more.
Soft is another curveball by the mysterious Auckland artist, making a Tony Hawk Pro Skater-like leap from the virtual skate park of his previous (and classic) punk-pop album Grind State into dazed interstate highway vistas. Soft swaps out the those bubblegum guitars and punchy melodies for twinkly, glacial VST soft-synths (geddit?) and a distinctive mid-tempo croon conveying feelings of stasis and a contemplative moment in the artist's often riotous back-catalogue. Which doesn't for a moment mean that Soft isn't rammed full of bangers, they're just bangers of a non-punk rawk variety - nodding in the direction of recent NZ synth-pop trailblazers (it's released via Crystal Magic Records, duh) while putting PHF's impossible-to-pin-down, 'vaguely hostile but pretty fun I guess' spin on the whole affair.
The title-track runs deep, epic John Carpenter-esque synth pads tug the heartstrings while indecipherable vocals drawl emotively - cinematic vibes of broken teen romance mix with tacit Black Hole abject horror. 'I Ran (My Mouth)' has a frazzled, over caffeinated 'it's 4pm in the office and I feel terrible' aura of regret hanging around its delicate, light-as-a-feather melodies, while on the Lynchian 'Y&B' PHF reimagines himself as non-other than a male Julee Cruise, creating a niche literally no-one knew they wanted until right now.
