SoftSun – Daylight In The Dark
SoftSun – Daylight In The Dark
Ripple Music
Release Date: 08/11/24
Running Time: 40:10
Review by Dark Juan
Score: 8/10
Good afternoon, dear friends. It’s Dark Juan here, ersatz Rock god and man who is writing a review about heavy music while wearing a ratty grey cardigan and having a nice cup of tea as it is a little chilly in the environs of Yorkshire at the moment. I’m not even wearing a Metal t-shirt. Instead, I am wearing an Ingsoc one from Nineteen Eighty-Four, the famous novel by George Orwell.
War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength.
Sometimes it does feel thus in the modern world, where information saturation, and the depression that can arise from it, is very real. Add to that the absolute sewer of humanity that is social media when someone disagrees, the absolute polarisation of any viewpoint and the fact that there are no longer any real consequences for your actions when you say something on the internet that would have you spitting out your own teeth had you said it somewhere in real life, it is not surprising that there are significant mental health difficulties being suffered by many people around the world, especially when you add to the equation that life is not getting better for people, despite more money floating around than ever before.
This state of mind has been caused by Norwegian/ American Heavy Dronegaze band SoftSun, whose debut album “Daylight In The Dark” is currently playing on the mighty and puissant Platter of Splatter ™. This band is a trio composed of Gary Arce (Fatso Jetson, Ten East, Dark Tooth Encounter, Big Scenic Nowhere, Yawning), Pia Isaksen (Superlynx, PIA ISA) and Dan Joeright (Earth Moon Earth, The Rentals) and they have only been playing as SoftSun since 2023. They are a haunting, maudlin prospect indeed…
The record opens with ‘Unholy Waters’, and the first thing of note which hits the ears of Dark Juan is the growling, predatory, big cat-like bass of Pia Isaksen, which is very reminiscent of the estimable Grog from Feline and Die So Fluid. It is front and centre in the sound of the band and forms the bulwark of the music, which is enhanced by echo and reverb dripping, and slowly drawn out melody lines on the guitar – the immediate vibe Dark Juan gets from this song is that of a heavier, less poppy, even more introverted The Cure with added LSD and mescaline-fuelled Psychedelia. It is quite moving, but it is not going to turn you into a happy camper. Even Isaksen’s shimmering, clean vocal carries a sad, defeated undertone that tugs at the heartstrings. SoftSun play music for people who find bats cute, and fit fairly neatly into the increasingly wide categorisation that is Goth. They are quite remarkably similar to Shoegaze and Gothic Rock and would fit beautifully into a compilation that would see them join the likes of Xmal Deutschland and Waterglass.
The overall feel of the album is languid misery, the way the music ebbs and flows analogous, to the way thoughts and feeling overwhelm or distract you in times of distress and sorrow – one moment you might be thinking about the loss of a loved one or pet, and the next your mind has taken you off into tangents about what might happen if you ruptured a continental plate with a large enough explosion. It is sour mash whiskey on a porch of a timber house somewhere in the Mojave Desert, watching the sun go down slowly as you get increasingly drunk to blot out the horrors that the dark brings you. The quiet contemplation before hell begins, the mustering of courage and fortitude before having to face unthinkable problems and monsters of your own mental making. It is the slowing of time when you are waiting for something unpleasant, the wallowing in a misery that you could solve by an easy action, yet having the complete unwillingness to take that action, because it, well, requires action. It is liminal music for liminal emotions, occupying that space between repose and action, that crossing of a border, that moving across a threshold, never to return to the state you were in.
Musical transcendentalism, if you will. SoftSun are the soundtrack to change and metamorphosis.
Although I am not sure Metal fans will get much out of “Daylight In The Dark”. I mean, I dig the fuck out of it, but your average fan will probably find SoftSun boring as they are slow, languid and liquid, and not all that heavy. What they do have is acid-dripping emotion and music that plays the nerves like an extra instrument. They are knife-edged, raw pathos that emerges slowly and dangerously from the darkness in your soul. They are moments of ethereal beauty among ice cold rejection. But they are not Metal. Does this make them irrelevant as a band?
In Dark Juan’s view, absolutely not. SoftSun may not be a Metal band, but they are most definitely Metal-adjacent as they have successfully melded the staring at the floor of Shoegaze with the raw emotionality of Drone – a combination of Chapterhouse and Slowdive with Swans and Lotus Thrones, if you wouldn’t mind exercising your minds for a moment.
Not Metal, but heavy in an entirely different way. The music of SoftSun is ponderous and slow-moving by design, and it is this Mogadon-senses-dulled pace, emotion and structure that gives the music a kind of mystical power that Metal is not able to replicate in any great measure. The power of SoftSun’s music comes from the world building, the interaction between voice and instruments, the thunderous foundation of the bass driving the guitar lines, as layers and layers build to heaviness over an almost Industrial drum pattern that relies as much on the cymbals to drive the music as the actual drums, and all of this meshes and interacts in forms that morph and change over time so when you get to the end of a song it bears little to no resemblance to where it set out from. That is magic in action.
The Patented Dark Juan Blood Splat Rating System awards SoftSun 8/10 for a record that charms and saddens, offers love and alienation and is a challenging listen for the more exploratory fan of music. Marks have been removed because SoftSun don’t play Metal and Ever-Metal.com is a Metal website.
TRACKLISTING:
01. Unholy Waters
02. Daylight In The Dark
03. Exit Wounds
04. Continents
05. Dragged Across the Desert Floor
06. Soft Sun
LINE-UP:
Gary Arce – Guitars
Pia Isaksen – Bass and vocals
Dan Joeright – Drums
LINKS:
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