Distance isn’t keeping Soft Healer down. Though two members now reside in Ithaca, NY, the originally-Austin-based experimental pop group has just released a new EP and will be touring in the coming months. Austin was treated with an early album release celebration this past Saturday. Consistently employing drums, guitar, bass, synths, and saxophone, Soft Healer impressively creates diverse arrangements and complex sonic palates that shift considerable between songs.
The saxophone along with Marie Butcher’s distinct wail provide the band’s defining features and possess a transfixing and raw power. Soft Healer’s understanding of texture allows competing and layered sounds as the band moves between distorted guitar, sexy sax notes, and loosely structures drums. Songs swell, build, unfurl beautifully, and take surprising and challenging turns. The live show furthered evidence of these facts as the band played to a completely packed Hotel Vegas.
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