Quite comfy, quite nice, quite quite coalesce amid every other hands-folded adjective that comes to mind on The Softlightes mild-mannered debut. Perhaps it’s their style itself that lends itself to emotionally recessive reactions. “Leanor and Me” takes a lovely little waltz, layers acoustic harmony blur, and then, in equally parsed measure, sprinkles in laptop blips and clicks so shushed that they sound like they’re wearing bunny slippers. Part of what worked, for all of ten seconds, for the Postal Service was that the boy-girl vocal pong match had brisk movement underneath. The feathery lightness of Ron Fountenberry’s voice folded into Kristian Dunn’s backing exhales, make for songs that make Lush sound like Motorhead. The Softlightes suffer from an indistinction that doesn’t sound purposeful the way that My Bloody Valentine fuzzed the edges or even more recently the way that The Papercuts cut clean lines of electronica and campfire folk while retaining a sense of emotional attachment. It’s impossible to loathe The Softlightes, but just as easy to drag your finger down the dimmer switch until the band simply disappears into its own pitter patter mist.
~ Terry Sawyer
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