Soft Boiled Break Out of Their Shell on “Early Mid Late Thirties”
A lot of what we used to call “college rock” was older twentysomethings writing gracefully simple body bouncers for younger twentysomethings, the thinnest veneer of wisdom bridging a scant but significant gulf of years. The emergence of the “twentysomething” historically defined the rise of alternative rock in the early 90s, and ever since industries have been trying to appeal to that relatively new demographic ever since. But what happens when you’re suddenly not in your twenties anymore? What happens if you’re still killing time trying to figure out your life, but all the songs about killing time trying to figure out your life don’t apply to you anymore?
In a sense, a song about reaching a future you half-expected to arrive at is the ideal launching pad for Soft Boiled, a Seattle band risen from the ashes (laid by the chicken?) of bombastic alternative rock band Happy Times Sad Times. Before their dissolution in 2019, the band managed a hell of a send-off in Don’t You Want To Dream Again?, a pitch-perfect collection of Pixies-esque bangers that not enough people have heard. It depressed, honestly, in its swan-song success. One pandemic and a handful of introductory shows later, lead singer Roger Hutchins and guitarist Aniela Sobel, along with bassist Evan Captain and new drummer Eric Sobel, are finally back in recorded form - and also, unsurprisingly, in top form.
“Early Mid Late Thirties” is catchy, almost to an infuriating degree. It dares you to keep it from worming into your brain. Its familiar four-chord rotation, inextricable from countless songs meant for swilling beer and shouting the chorus, soundtracks a song about people whose slacker tendencies have gone way past their due date. Hutchins’ voice, as always, delivers his lines at the halfway point between sneer and salve, but Sobel’s harmonies are arguably what shifts the track into glorious pop territory.
The song is basically all chorus, which is sick because the chorus is built off of one of those circuitous turns of phrase that begs you to learn it, then repeat it. Amid its winding logic, Hutchins acknowledges the acceptance that comes with reaching the finish line of your early adulthood, when the sirens turn off even as the problems remain. You might still be circling the drain, he says, but at least you’ll finally feel okay with it.