Soft Hair
Soft Hair
WEIRD WORLD/DOMINO
7/10
If you happened to Google “soft hair” anytime prior to August of this year, your search results would have unearthed intricately detailed lists of preteen girls’ favorite ways to achieve lusciously bouncy locks. Today, however, that same query yields a couple of shirtless, slightly-past-quarter-life guys centered in front of backdrops likely found in Deb’s glamour shot studio. But, as if to not wholly disappoint those actually aiming to improve upon the texture of their mane, these fellas do happen to rock some long and vivacious sets of hair.
Soft Hair, the result of a five-plus-year experimental collaboration between indie-rock explorers Connan Mockasin and Sam Dust, is every bit as curious as the personae the musicians have created within the moniker. Portraying themselves as mediocre try-hard artists (which they are not) who bend the norm in the beauty and wardrobe department (which they actually pull off quite well), the duo is either mocking the music industry and its excess or lapping up the immense possibilities that lie within it. It’s likely a healthy mixture of both, and, humor aside, this debut finds the pair achieving something together that it is quite palatable considering its many bizarre details and otherwise obstructing nuances. Anyone who’s unfamiliar with Mockasin’s work with Charlotte Gainsbourg, for example, or Dust’s stint fronting Late of the Pier will have an easy time grooving to Soft Hair without feeling like they’re missing the punch line, while those familiar with the musicians will embrace each purposeful intricacy and thoughtfully placed melody.
Mockasin’s wavy, synth-doused funk oozes globules into Dust’s innovative instrumentation and hurried energy, all of it pulsating beneath the latter’s hypnotic warbling and the former’s Prince-esque falsetto and infecting the record with an extraterrestrial fog. Soft Hair feels like a VR ride through a bright neon tunnel taken from a fur-lined egg chair—it’s disorienting, even alarming at times, yet it radiates a comforting warmth that makes listeners abandon any prior fears. From the primal clinks and pops of opening track “Relaxed Lizard” to the sticky-sweet soul of “Lying Has To Stop” and through to the shoegazing, surf-blues instrumental of closer “l.i.v.,” these eight tracks are certain to take you on a short but fun trip—enviable hair unfortunately not included.
