The Soft Pack – HEAVENLY JUKEBOX

Heavenly Cacophony - The Soft Pack

Heavenly Recordings is proud to announce that it’s in business with The Soft Pack.

The four piece Punk Rock band from San Diego are the first signing to the label in ages, due mostly to the bullshit it had to endure during it’s latter days at EMI. Now, Heavenly is liberated and here’s the celebration.

“We flipped on hearing the (Muslims) recordings late last year and immediately went over to LA to see them. It’s our kind of Punk Rock. Melodic and discordant and tuneful and shambolic and intense and man, what a drummer. They have all the contradictions that a young band should have. Like The Modern Lovers and The Saints and the Elevators and the Velvets before them. Thankfully they liked us too and hands have been shaken”

The band are currently playing shows in Europe before returning to the U.S. to finish writing their debut record which is due out early 2010 on Heavenly / Co-op.

www.myspace.com/thesoftpack

n536986742_2373245_5799696 Friday the 15th was GOOD DAY, a very good day indeed despite the rip roaring hangover’s we were suffering from the night before after spending the night down in Brighton seeing the mighty ‘THE INVISIBLE’ & the ‘never a same gig twice’ ‘MICACHU & THE SHAPES’, both of which our essential viewing/listening but we’ll cover both of them at another time, this is about one of those days when everything falls beautifully into place without even trying or dare I say it a total lack of trying.

We stayed down in Brighton because on the Friday we were signing a new band to Heavenly called THE SOFT PACK – 4 cool as cool is, not cool does, kids from L.A via San Diego who truck out the kinda punk ROCK born out of the Velvets/Modern Lovers using a classic art punk V formation of perpetual tumultuousness at the back with a driven flank of chugging base and drivin’ guitar to the sides while a just got out of bed abandonement with fixed eye stare shoots it as he tells it – POW – !

We had all that to look forward to later in the day & we had a fine day ahead of us, firstly the superb breakfast at the Pelirocco hotel – Ginger Micks residential homage to rock n roll & veggie sausgaes SWARATHMAM then it was down to Brightons first port of call ‘the pier’ for some clowning around & a lunchtime pint at the rough pub (Category C) that is Horatio’s, half past down by the dodgems. We could hear music coming from inside so we ducked to bar, sunk in and took in the alternative sounds of the far east and then . . . eh? what was a resplendent looking, hypnotic charming psych band from India doing playing in a pub on Brighton pier at midday? The band were called SWARATHMAM & the singer had all the good vibes with his ‘the healing power of music’ chants, his Indian Hendrix Fro & eventually a wooden horse that he rode around in with far more charm than that Emu fella. They were over not only for the Great Escape (where every club, pub & rug pop into gig venues for better or for worse) but as part of a program called Soundpad which involves the British Council & John Leckie. They were good, it was a good lunchtime drink, we were in good spirits. Well, so as not to bore you any further in the finer details of our GOOD day I shall surmise the GOOD bits as thus;

3 x mighty Brighton Bling chains bought on pier (& we got a discount)

Free pairs of LEVI from the One to Watch backstage (given not stolen, suppose they owed us, spend a lifetime buying one brand of jean eventually it all pays off)

Free beer & Pernod thanks to the French music export bureau

Signing the deal with The Soft Pack

Eating the best Fish & Chips in town

Watching the best band in Brighton that weekend (photos attached)

then getting cosy in the bar at the Pelirocco till it blurred into morning, this is where the story ends as I soon realized it had stopped being fun – but only at the point where I had started realizing again – up until then it had been well good!