For four milkmen from 1930s Austria, Soft Speaker had a preternatural grasp on the electric guitar.The band's first LP I'll Tend Your Garden is bursting with juicy riffs, sheets of fuzz and spacey crescendos. Soft Speaker conjure huge, solid rock songs injected with a healthy dose of Anglophilia.
While Garden offers little that's unprecedented in terms of bare writing, those who love rock from our neighbors across the pond won't be disappointed. The band strikes that tone that's simultaneously upbeat and a little mournful, much like we've seen over the years from Blur and neo-natal Radiohead. That's not to call this mimicry; Soft Speaker take brit-rock aesthetics and break them out of the walls of pop structure, instead letting the single-coils warble into the stratosphere. The record finds strength in moments of improvisation, like in the playful and pedal-fueled climax of "Three Beggars." Guitars swirl over clean and punchy bass as the licks fractal outward. While the sounds may be familiar, they're applied to a larger scope than we normally hear.
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