As a joke awhile back a friend created a game called, “Is it Balearic?” where based on a nebulous set of unspoken criteria players had to determine whether or not a band/song was indeed “balearic.” Given that A) the term gets tossed about like a wobbly genre frisbee and B) that as a “genre” it was already pretty wobbly to begin with, it was possibly the hardest easiest game to play in the history of all trivia games.
Regardless of whatever we may determine “balearic” means, Soft Rocks is unquestionably it.
Hailing from the coastal zones of Brighton, the dudes in Soft Rocks approximate Ibiza chillout vibes just about as well as anyone can. On The Curse of Soft Rocks, their new full-length release (on the veritable ESP Institute label,) Soft Rocks blissfully explore everything from the post-punk spacey glam of “We Hunt Buffalo” to the tropical yacht rock of “Mirador de las Estrellas” to dubby disco of “Magic Milk” to the early trip-hop “Air,” they come up with a sound that is as boundless as it is boundaryless. The album is one of the most exciting listens I’ve heard in a long time, and if it’d appeared a little earlier in the year, given the sheer volume of sounds, it very well would’ve qualified as 2 or 3 of my favorite albums of the year.
The curse of The Curse of Soft Rocks may very well be that it is so expansive that some people may wonder what exactly they’re listening to. The answer is quite simply, “it’s Balearic.”
SOFT ROCKS – The Curse of Soft Rocks [ESP007] (SNIPPETS) by ESP Institute