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{"id":32618,"date":"2020-04-22T14:10:41","date_gmt":"2020-04-22T18:10:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/?p=32618"},"modified":"2020-04-22T14:16:04","modified_gmt":"2020-04-22T18:16:04","slug":"playing-the-bay-soar-soft-dial-tone-new","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/playing-the-bay-soar-soft-dial-tone-new\/","title":{"rendered":"SOAR Leans on Friendship as Foundation for New LP soft dial tone"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"SOAR — Photo Credit: Erik Oseto<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
The latest album from San Francisco’s SOAR<\/a>, soft dial tone<\/i>, is very interested in texture. Sonic texture for sure, like the gentle feedback whine that marks the opening of the album. It took me a while to realize what it reminded me of. When I finally figured it out, I was presented with a very different animal: \u201cRory Shield<\/a>,\u201d the opening song from Sorority Noise\u2019s 2014 album *Forgettable<\/i>.<\/p>\n*
Not that these are the only two songs on earth to start out with feedback, but I think my brain created this word cloud connection because both songs let the noise become part of the song itself, not just to dirty up the tinny smoothness of a studio recording, but to offer a moment of band-geek satisfaction at using the bad<\/i> noise as the *good <\/i>noise.<\/p>\n*
The opener of soft dial tone<\/i> is called \u201ccomfort,\u201d but the song is less about finding the thing itself than it is about starting a journey to avoid becoming too reliant on the feeling. \u201cGet out of comfort\/welcome to the dirt\u201d sings the band, their voices slipping in and out and in between one another like an ouroboros.<\/p>\n
<a href=\"http:\/\/soartheband.bandcamp.com\/album\/soft-dial-tone\">soft dial tone by SOAR<\/a><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">This vocal weaving can be heard through the majority of the LP, and appears to be quite intentional; in the album\u2019s somewhat opaque Bandcamp commentary, the band notes that each member (guitarists Shannon Bodrogi and Jenna Marx, drummer Rebecca Redman, and bassist Mai Oseto) “contributes at least one song to <i>soft dial tone<\/i>.\u201d Like Carrie Bradshaw, I Couldn\u2019t Help But Wonder: did each member write lyrics of at least one song, or did they independently bring them to fruition with only finishing touches done by the whole band?<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">\u201cThere are common threads that connect each person in SOAR,\u201d the description continues. Going off the album alone, a major connective thread would seem to be a intimate relationship with nature: its easy transition to metaphor, its restorative qualities, and, as mentioned above, its texture.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Nature allows for pain as equally as it does pleasure on <i>soft dial tone<\/i>. In \u201ccorner of a room,\u201d they sing \u201cflat on my back like a stepping stone\u201d before circling back to dirt on the next track, (aptly named \u201cjust dirt\u201d) where they wish it upon someone like a poison: \u201cwords are just words\/dirt is just dirt\/but I really hope you eat it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">\u201cshark skin\u201d is the longest song on the record, and feels very much like its thematic heart. Like \u201ccomfort,\u201d the song starts on a note of feedback, but it\u2019s dragged though the background of the track like the wake from a motorboat. Every time it resurfaces, your brain struggles to figure out what it\u2019s hearing, especially when the whole band joins in for supporting vocals that become indiscriminate from the tone itself.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Nature becomes restorative again in \u201cmade of gold\u201d which ends on a chant of \u201cpaint a statue\/put it in a bright room\/paint it golden\/I feel golden.\u201d This is one of the album\u2019s best moments, where the simpatico of the members \u2014 whether musical, personal, or both \u2014<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>shines though like the sun they speak of.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">\u201cghost\u201d is also an album highlight, with short, poetic bursts that stand out even on a first listen: \u201cbigger than the full moon, you\/eat around the parts that bruise,\u201d one of the members sing-songs at the end of the first verse. This metaphor carried me through the rest of the song, which somehow manages to be both intimate and ambiguous, a touching three minutes about feeling like an impermanent fixture in someone\u2019s life. In fact, it carried me through the rest of the album, as the metaphors in the last few songs didn\u2019t land with the same effectiveness.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">This isn\u2019t to say the LP loses its grip towards the end; <i>soft dial tone<\/i> remains consistent throughout, and the delicate layering of the vocals is one that only comes with true collaboration. It\u2019s clear that SOAR is made up of people who recognize their inherent<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>dissonances, those pesky ones that still exist despite the tight weave of long-term friendships. But if they can make an entire album with this firmly in mind, it\u2019s something we shouldn\u2019t forget as we listen, when even our neighbors seem so far away <a href=\"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/playing-the-bay-katsy-pline\/\">as to paint the world with impossibility<\/a>. Perhaps your more ambitious quarantine creative plans aren\u2019t as untenable as you think. Perhaps your friends aren\u2019t as far away as they feel.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Hang in there, ya\u2019ll.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The latest album from San Francisco’s SOAR, soft dial tone, is very interested in texture. Sonic texture for sure, like the gentle feedback whine that marks the opening of the album. It took me a while to realize what it reminded me of. When I finally figured it out, I was presented with a very […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":104,"featured_media":32619,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7851],"tags":[1789,10106],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/15975036_1633976213574872_8515147835812612999_o-e1587578080931.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32618"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/104"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32618"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32618\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32626,"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32618\/revisions\/32626"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32619"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32618"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32618"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}