ALBUM REVIEW: Soft Side – Feldspar
Hardcore outfit, FELDSPAR, have put out their second full-length Soft Side. The Italian group have only existed for three years, but so far, their impact has been loud, with their newest offering being no exception despite the title. Along with wanting to bring in varying sounds and genre-crossovers, the focus of the album is a critique on toxic masculinity, and an exploration of how stepping into your emotions shows your true character. That there’s nothing wrong with having that soft side.
Another important thing for the band that despite the, at times, contrasting genre styles, it that it was important for it to sound united and blended nicely, not like two different entities making an album together, according to frontman Rick Zamurri. As he put it: “What we did instead was keep the hardcore in the engine and put the melody on top of it. The rhythm section doesn’t get softer just because the chorus is beautiful.”
We are also introduced to the melodic vocals heard from new members, Marianne Leoni and Viviana Di Bari, offering a fresh take on typical style of having rough and clean vocals, as heard from the very start of record with opening track Heart Is A Ghetto, Things open up with pop-rock sounds, nostalgic in terms of being somewhat teen pop coded with the vocal style before Zamurri comes in allowing a small shift into a harder sound. Yet that pop-rock never vanishes, nor is the heavier sound washed out, it’s brought together and seamlessly blended into becoming something stunning. The integration of louder and softer sounds allows FELDSPAR to create something fun and fresh that, from our viewpoint, looks to have been so much fun to create with that enjoyment translating and carrying over to the listener.
We have moments that feel straight out of the 00s with the pop-punk sounds heard on tracks like Good Kids, Sweating On, and Unsober, which are just pure joy to listen to, and you can’t help but appreciate the grunge meets garage-rock melodies brought neatly into the mix. We also have the more punk-rock focused Aberdeen that we can easily imagine being a crowd favourite during many a live performance.
Admittedly, there is one moment where the result feels a little clumsier as opposed to perfectly blended as the rest of the album is. The title track opens with Zamurri’s vocals where we believe the style was meant to be of the shouty meets spoken word variety while trying to be lowkey to not overshadow the pop melodies on the song, yet it ends up sounding a little more awkward than it was intended. Although it improves as the track progresses so we can’t be mad for too long. That’s our only critique.
We have a stunning album that truly acts as crossover of both the gentle and harsher sounds of the rock genre, resulting in a joyous listening experience.
Rating: 8/10
Soft Side is out now via Stage Dive Records.
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