The Soft White Sixties - The Soft Way EP

The Soft White Sixties
The Ocean Way EP
2016
Spotify

It may be hard to find a band that is more properly named than The Soft White Sixties. This San Francisco born, currently Los Angeles based, band incorporate the warmness of rock and roll from the sixties with a slight bend towards the modern. There is nothing inherently wrong with evoking a previous decade and giving your take on that music, the breakdown happens when it becomes overly derivative. The Ocean Way EP balances right on that line for the entire runtime of the record. They are just contemporary enough to not be laughable, but still hold far to tight to production styles and sounds from that era. Hearing something intentionally sound rough is not inventive it's lazy, especially in the arena that The Soft White Sixties are trying to play. The first two tracks are the most egregious in that sense, with "Sorry to Say" being incessant on repeating one line over and over. They are going for a song where the crowd can really participate and sing with them, but after listening to it who would actually want to. "Tell Me It's Over" is the first soulful sounding song we get and it is a welcome break after the first two tracks. Even the ripping guitars are better here, and shockingly when singer Octavio Genera sings without some kind of affect on his voice it sounds better. The song eventually descends in to an annoying jam sesh, but by that point it is forgivable.

Now we have to talk about the chorus on "Follow Me". I don't know what they were thinking, but they have taken an otherwise pretty good song and made it horrible with this chorus. It is sung slightly off key, lots of call and response and tons of repetition which should be perfect for crowd infection, but it never ever connects. The mix is also a major issue throughout the record. The drums are too quiet, bass almost completely non existent, vocals way to high but put through distortion and the piano over powers almost everything else. This is not how you professionally mix a record, and it makes songs which otherwise might work sound like total shit. The Soft White Sixties seem like that band who one of your friends is wildly in to but no one can quite figure out why. Maybe their brother is the bass player or they used to fuck the singer, but either way this is not a band you should be getting involved with. Pass.

3.1 out of 10