"While shoegaze bands are often known for their wall-of-sound volume tactics, there's a clever amount of distance employed in Softcult's style. When a Flower Doesn't Grow, the duo's long-awaited debut album, relishes in the contrast between delivering harsh truths about trauma, oppression, and growth and cloaking those ideas in a pillowy-soft exterior; throughout its 11 tracks, the album channels windswept beauty and fierce intensity, containing Mercedes and Phoenix's most illuminating meditations on personal and systemic injustice yet."
"The record takes its title from Alexander Den Heijer's quote, "When a flower doesn't bloom, you fix the environment in which it grows, not the flower." The image of decay and rebirth is evocative, and Softcult have no problem channeling the awesome power of natural beauty. They can escalate towards punk-like aggression, exemplified by heavier tracks "Tired!" and "She Said, He Said," but for the most part, the justified anger in Softcult's sound is less an outburst and more a powerful summoning."
"Phoenix Arn-Horn, who alongside their twin sibling Mercedes forms the Canadian duo Softcult, understands this instinctively. "I don't know if you've ever been in a situation where someone quietly and calmly was kind of reading you the riot act as opposed to yelling in your face," they explain. "It's like 10 times scarier. I feel like that's our vibe sometimes.""
Softcult, a Canadian twin duo, blends quiet shoegaze textures with politically charged lyricism on their debut album When a Flower Doesn't Grow. The album spans 11 tracks that juxtapose pillowy-soft instrumentation with direct meditations on trauma, oppression, and personal and systemic injustice. The title references fixing environments rather than individuals, invoking cycles of decay and rebirth. Songs range from windswept beauty to punk-like aggression, with heavier moments on "Tired!" and "She Said, He Said." The duo maintains deliberate production distance, favoring unsettling quiet that amplifies the thematic weight of the lyrics.
Read at Consequence
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