In the days since posting about my iTunes catalog, I found myself listening to the accompanying playlist I assembled quite a bit, maybe more than I thought I would. It was a nice jolt of nostalgia, yes, but also an invitation to immerse myself in those songs again, curious to see what still holds up a decade-plus later. The music blog era churned through bands so quickly — guilty as charged! — that it seems like the distance of time is a necessary criteria for judgment.
In that regard, it’s hard for me to wrap my head around the fact that I first discovered The Soft Pack (née The Muslims) in 2008. The “blog band” descriptor, which evolved into a bit of pejorative, doesn’t quite fit The Soft Pack, whose San Diego-bred brand of lo-fi surf punk has a timeless quality.
I feel confident saying that after pretty much only listening to their debut EP and subsequent two albums since including the song “Extinction” on that playlist.
So I wanted to dedicate this week’s three songs exclusively to them. Well, almost all three songs. One is by Nada Surf, who included their version of “Bright Side” on their covers album If I Had a Hi-Fi. It also inspired me, in what I thought would be a long shot, to reach out to Nada Surf frontman Matthew Caws on Twitter to ask about his thoughts on that cover and The Soft Pack. He kindly replied in short order, for which I am super grateful.
(Here’s a fun Soft Pack fact: Guitarist Matty McLoughlin was a relief pitcher at University of Richmond, which we discussed in a 2012 interview.)
3 SONGS
Nada Surf: “Bright Side” (The Soft Pack cover)
It would seem to me that having a song covered by such an established and highly regarded band like Nada Surf must feel like the ultimate compliment. And the juxtaposition of these versions is precisely what can make covers so fun.
Where The Soft Pack’s original opens with an unbuttoned, shambolic shuffle, Nada Surf punches up the tempo and melody. Soft Pack singer Matt Lamkin is having somewhat of an existential crisis, a hopeless rumination on life:
Yeah, I'm watching the days go by, whoa, oh
Yeah, I'm watching ‘em drop like flies
Yeah, I'm counting ‘em go, go, go, go
And it's making me wanna cry
Lamkin has taken his lumps and his throaty culmination — I’m trying to see the bright siiiiide — is more desperate than resolute as the song’s catchy melody rides out under a messy scribbling of guitar jamming.
This is where Matthew Caws takes his cue. Like so many Nada Surf songs, he finds reason for optimism, pulling open the blinds on a pity party. Caws ties up the loose ends here and makes the chorus sound more like a promise.
I asked Caws how he came across The Soft Pack and what their approach to the making this cover was:
“if we're lucky, we all have friends or family members who turn us on to stuff we end up loving. nick landrum is a friend of mine from brooklyn who now lives in brighton. he has a great music podcast called "worn of the phono." we've hung out a bunch on and off and he was always really generous in showing me what he was into. from obscure artists to deep cuts of well-known ones, i quickly came to trust his taste completely. garage, 70s, country, modern underground, anything and everything. he played me the muslims album shortly after it came out and i fell for it head over heels. i think the first soft pack album is a real pinnacle of so many things i love. it has so much energy, it's so smart (but doesn't show off, it just is). their whole thing is totally brilliant.
“our aim with that covers album was to record whatever we felt like, with absolutely no regard for how well-known the songs were. i listen to the soft pack all the time, but haven't listened to our "bright side" version in ages. listening to it now, i can see we just recorded it as if we'd written it, another aim with most covers i think. the optimistic interpretation is due at least in part to the joy of playing a song we wish we'd written.”
The Soft Pack: “Extinction”
A good revenge song can really hit the spot. Sometimes, you just gotta tell someone to eat shit and move on with your day. It’s soul-cleansing. The Soft Pack does it to perfection here with “Extinction,” one of the songs on the aforementioned playlist. This is either a break-up song or a middle finger to a mortal enemy (maybe one and the same). The catchy surf-rock vibes belie the acrimony, both bitter and liberating:
You waste all your time in front of a mirror
So, I'll waste my time trying to make it clear
'Cause I've got news for you
Yes, I've got news for you
I don't want anything from you
Sometimes going nuclear is the only option.
The Soft Pack: “Answer to Yourself”
I’m not sure what qualifies as a “hit” for a band like The Soft Pack, but this was probably close. (They did perform it on Letterman.) Like “Bright Side,” there’s a touch of fatalism to Lamkin’s lyrics, a longing to be better that feels out of reach. For as encouraging as the self-talk sounds (You got a talent, don't you know? / You're more talented than you know), the chorus promptly snuffs it out:
But I think I'm gonna die / Before I see my time / Think I'm gonna die / Trying anyway.
There’s probably a larger metaphor in here about the fleeting nature of a band’s life cycle, but thankfully for us, The Soft Pack did see the bright side of it, however briefly.
3 STORIES
Puzzmo is imagining a better newspapers game page (The Verge)
I’m addicted to word games. I faithfully play the New York Times’ suite of games every day, at the very least never missing the crossword and Wordle. (I’ve lately been consumed by sudoku, too.)
Besides Tetris, one non-NYT game I play regularly is TypeShift by Zach Gage, so I was pretty excited to see he was developing a community-driven newspaper-like games page called Puzzmo, which includes TypeShift along with a daily crossword, Really Bad Chess, Flipart and SpellTower (a game for which I’m really struggling to build a strategy).
Puzzmo’s manifesto is worth reading, notably the “You are smart” section: “Anyone can be great at games. Games are about challenge, but they should always invite you in. Games must not use tricks to make players feel smart, they must help players actually be smart. A great game is also a great teacher.”
In his interview with The Verge, Gage said: “My philosophy for every game on Puzzmo is, to the best that I can do, every game is meant to be solvable by the worst possible players.”
How John Steinbeck tricked his kids into reading great books (Hey Pop)
After we recently bunked our boys’ beds, our 7-year-old asked me: “Can I take books to the top bunk and read?” This gave me an incredible thrill. Of all the things to ask permission for, I hope they never feel like they have to ask if they’re allowed to read.
Watching him and his 6-year-old brother go from learning sight words to reading small sentences to full paragraphs to eagerly checking books out of the library feels like the best parenting win. (We’re in a full-on “Dog Man” and “Cat Kid” phase.)
So I really enjoyed this story about John Steinbeck and his kids.
These Latines are normalizing alcohol-free spaces for la cultura (De Los)
When I stopped drinking nearly four years ago, I worried (and still do) not so much about the exposure to temptation (though there is that) but more of the expectation to drink. It can create a little bit of self-imposed pressure. Who am I if I don’t drink? What’s a social interaction without a drink? Do I have to explain this to everyone?
This story in De Los in the Los Angeles Times opened my eyes to the idea that this is an underlying concern across cultures, whether Irish (like me) or Mexican or Puerto Rican, etc. The rituals and behaviors are weighed down by history.
And when you take a look at the history of when distilled beverages became popularized in Latin America, you’ll find it was at the height of the colonial era.
I’ve examined my own drinking from mostly social and genetic angles. But this story definitely has me thinking more about the heavier implications in the context of cultural history, mine and others’.
3 SNIPPETS
‘93 til infinity
My all-time favorite album, Midnight Marauders by A Tribe Called Quest, turned 30 years old on Nov. 9. There was a bit going around on Twitter, asking what’s a perfect album that came out when you were 16. It just so happened I was 16 in 1993 and I will forever consider Midnight Marauders perfect (I nearly named this Substack “A Word Tour” as a play on “Award Tour”). But in considering the question, ‘93 was packed with classics: Enter the Wu-Tang (released on the SAME DAY as Midnight Marauders); Souls of Mischief’s ‘93 Til Infinity; Smashing Pumpkins’ Siamese Dream; Pearl Jam’s Vs.; Cypress Hill’s Black Sunday; Morphine’s Cure for Pain; De La Soul’s Buhloone Mindstate; and Digable Planets’ debut Reachin’ (A New Refutation of Time and Space).
I tackled a couple of those albums recently:
Sinkable
I recently finished listening to the audiobook for Sinkable: Obsession, the Deep Sea, and the Shipwreck of the Titanic by Daniel Stone, a fascinating dive (sorry) into the science of and our obsession with shipwrecks, most notably the history in the efforts to find and refloat the Titanic. There’s a ton of information to digest. Here’s one nugget that stunned me: “But you don’t have to go far or deep to find one. Most people on Earth are at any moment less than 100 miles from at least one wreck. There are wrecks in every ocean and every lake. There are abandoned wrecks lying in the desert of Namibia and under corn fields in Kansas.”
We sleep in May
College basketball has started, which can only mean one thing: More unhinged lunacy from Jon Rothstein and his Twitter feed.
Really dig the way you write and what you write about, sir.