There is a time when musicians tend to transition into a quieter and wildly mellower stance on songwriting. This time and stance is generally closer to the age of 30, straddling the bold boundary line between the unequivocally forced or comfortably executed. If this glaringly unfounded assumption of mine is true then I would approach Little Wings’ Soft Pow’r as: a) the product of five aging ex-members of a late 90’s hardcore band, and b) an album of seven songs seamlessly and effortlessly crafted by five aging members of ex-hardcore bands who now sport casually rural beards.
The imagined-to-be sorted musical pasts—or current resemblance to a member of The Band—of Little Wings’ members aside (I can’t say I have researched them at all, or am familiar with any of the names adorning the linear notes) what is delivered in Soft Pow’r is refreshingly stripped-down and comfortable to not only the band, but also the listener. From the background room noise book ending the first song “Scuby” to the straining-for-a-note-you-can-hit quality of the vocals on the last track, “What Button?” Little Wings create an air that these songs are foremost for them and that you are welcome to wander through the Portland living room they probably recorded them in and relax.
The greatest success of Soft Pow’r is that Little Wings are able to keep the formula basic—acoustic guitars, half-tempo drums with stripped down bass, and tastefully sparse electric guitars—while not boring you. “Warming” is the album’s longest track at just under eight minutes, but manages to not leave you feeling that it should have ended minutes earlier despite very little variation on the initial theme. “Free Bird” stands out as the most representative track on the album with its’ piano accompaniment and vocal dynamic (despite the unfortunate connotations of the song name), and “Beep About” let’s the bass playing drive the entire song against the vocal melody and brushed cymbals.
Little Wings succeeds with Soft Pow’r because of their ability to let slight variations in instrumentation and vocals from song to song develop in their own space on each track. While the folkish qualities of the band aren’t anything startlingly new, Little Wings make a uniquely strong argument for their music on Soft Pow’r, and provide the hope to poorly tattooed musicians lugging around heavy amps and screaming a lot that mellowing out and turning down is not a creative compromise.
|