Soft Kill have always been a bit of an anachronism, if not a straight-up enigma. Even beyond their dedication to Cure-esque gloomwave that perhaps rivals only Drab Majesty in its aesthetic sense of clarity, the Chicago-based project has never seemed driven to align themselves with any of their peers on labels like Dais or Felte who mine a similar era of coldwave and post-punk for inspiration (I’m pretty sure I first learned about them when they took the stage alongside blackened-screamo ensemble Portrayal of Guilt and thrash-metalers Skeletonwitch in 2018). Everything about Soft Kill—including their general lack of respect for the dictates of album release cycles and other press norms—betrays the fact that Tobias Grave and Nicole Colbath refuse to let the music industry’s conventions get in the way of releasing music the way they choose to.
One side effect of that fact is that they release a lot of it. Since the band detailed their 2020 album Dead Kids R.I.P. City for us, they’ve put out an EP or an LP every year, with this past April’s Escape Forever full-length already seeing a follow-up in the form of the surprise-released Roseland EP earlier this week. While the three songs on that newest project effectively serve as B-sides to 2023’s Metta World Peace (I forgot to mention another important detail: in 2023 they released an album called Metta World Peace) without its forays into hardcore rap, the tracklist ends with a cover of the DC melodic-hardcore group Dag Nasty’s 1986 track “Circles.”
Maybe it’s no surprise, then, that when we reached out to Soft Kill to share a list of influences on Roseland, the playlist they sent us was entirely made up of both popular and deepcut rocksteady, skinhead reggae, and dancehall music, mostly from the genres’ native Jamaica. “One of the best things about this genre is the rabbit holes you can go down,” Grave shares before providing some context on the track “Johnny Too Bad” from the Harder They Come OST. “This song is credited to ‘The Slickers,’ but according to Sydney Crooks and Victor Forbes, this song is actually The Pioneers. Either way, it was essentially the same band, one of the most distinguished vocal harmony groups in early reggae. The gun court is very important in Jamaican history and worth a look into.”
There you have it: If you’re having any trouble getting into The Maytals and Jimmy Cliff, start here, or dive into the playlist below. For something completely different, check out the Roseland EP here.
