I’m a huge grunge fan. Since I was a little kid, I adore guys like Kurt Cobain or Buzz Osborne not only because of the way their music made me feel but also because of the relentless attitude and weird humor grunge artists had in the early ’90s. It stuck forever and today I still feel, dress, and behave accordingly.
I know it is not that easy for grunge bands to succeed nowadays, and even for me, a musician and song-writer, it is getting harder to place this genre on the market. Maybe because of the music industry that is highly consumerist or only because of the fuzz guitars and weird hair-styles but as long as grunge fans still live, there will always be a cool band for us to follow and listen to. I just found mine!
Portland-based power trio Soft Cheese is releasing today (December 4) Raspberries, the kick-off track of their debut album, and this track is everything I look for in a grunge (but also alt-rock/shoegaze/new wave) song: It sounds raw but beautiful, light and heavy, mellow and dynamic, popish and rockish: a perfectly grunged–up catchy track. Composed around chorus guitars, full-sounding basslines, and heavy rock-like drum patterns, it spells familiarity and a great feeling of melancholic nostalgia, especially for a 29-year-old like me.
Hugh, the guy behind Soft Cheese’s friendly soothing voice, sings playfully about loss, death, and how we tend to look at it. We suffer a lot as it is, and tragedy only works if you see it as the other side of comedy. I always felt like humor is a necessary surviving tool if we want to keep it sane since pain and sorrow are always on the move to get you. Sometimes, the best way to cry is to laugh and Raspberries is a great way to explain it.