Soft Moon [Captured Tracks,2010]
The band is one of the long line of lush, dark pop bands that sprouted out of the tail end of 80's post-punk and shoegaze. The Soft Moon pick up the very best elements of those movements and craft a sound that’s not unlike anything out ther - dark, whispered affair redolent of late '70s / early '80s post-punk and proto-goth sounds. It's a fairly faithful retread of sounds previously touched on by the likes of Joy Division and The Cure, but this San Francisco band pull it off better than most.
San Francisco multi-instrumentalist Luis Vasquez’s continues the dark vibe of his previous 7″’s, putting together something that’s New Romantic, Krautrock, post-punk, noisy, distant, anguished, engaged. Raised under the burning sun of the Mojave desert, Vasquez channels both his punk upbringing and Afro-Cuban heritage to sculpt decidedly dystopian soundscapes for a new generation of torn romantics. It's a record set somewhere in the near post-apocalypse where technology enchants as much as it destroys.
