I haven’t read all 750 pages of You Can’t Go Home Again, but I can only assume Thomas Wolfe’s brick of fiction meticulously details the ways in which our perceptions of our hometowns will forever be filtered through the way we saw them when we grew up there—viewed through some bizarre and deeply mundane but equally disorienting kaleidoscope wherein the same eight chain establishments get shuffled around to different locations, as The Ophelias’ Spencer Peppet puts in when introducing her band’s new single “Soft and Tame.”
The song comes from the group’s forthcoming independently released EP Ribbon, with the lead single “Black Ribbon” previously outlining the angst and nostalgia at the project’s core. Both shine through on “Soft and Tame,” which reaches similar swelling instrumental peaks as its predecessor while Peppet’s lyrics bluntly betray certain agitations she’s felt with her Southern Ohio home. “‘Soft and Tame’ is about that alien feeling, returning to a place that you used to know so thoroughly and being surprised by what’s in its place,” she explains of the track which, true to its name, is primarily marked by the chamber-pop sounds the band has honed over nearly a decade together. “It’s also about the way time changes people, how some people learn and grow and change—the way I hope I have, the way I’ve tried to!—and some people stay the same, stuck in their ways, roaming through Cincinnati like strays.
“It can be easy to compartmentalize those things and those people as either completely good or completely bad,” she adds, “but this song sits in the middle ground for a while before planting a stake, saying ‘I need you to stay the fuck away from me.’ Almost begging.”
Check out the video for the track below, and pre-order Ribbon here.
