Soft Black
The Earth Is Black (And Other Apocalyptic Lullabies for Children)
Rating: 3.5/5.0
Label: Plays With Dolls
Vincent Cacchione reportedly began playing guitar at an early age- this has certainly paid off, as his second full-length The Earth Is Black, shows off his seemingly effortless sense of rock ‘n’ roll songcraft. The Earth’s tunes all seem pretty well lived-in and in a sense, familiar enough that make Soft Black seem a lot more familiar than they are to those of us who haven’t seen them play in their native Brooklyn. This familiarity doesn’t end at the songs- the Soft Black main man Cacchione resembles T. Rex main man Marc Bolan. This bears mentioning because Bolan was himself, on a whole ‘nother level about dancing when he was 12, having stars in his beard, feelin’ real weird and becoming a vampire for one’s love.
Cacchione wrote songs for The Earth Is Black based upon dreams and nightmares he’d had. It seems like he had more of the latter as his songs are tormented by sorcerers, werewolves, decomposition and cannibalism. Like Bolan, he approaches his own burgeoning mythology, inhabited by movie monsters, with a kind of coy, childish tone in his voice: “We’re all kissing the dirt and decomposin’…take the first bite/ Take the first bite, baby/ Take the first bite of this rotten meat,” he sings during the campfire sing-along of “Kissing the Dirt,” outfitting well-worn rock tropes with nightmarish themes that are enjoyably tacky. Like Roky Erickson’s two-headed dogs of songs, we are affected by Soft Black’s vampirism ditties because of the off-kilter, innocent delivery.
“Ashtray Christ” sounds like a Ryan Adams song, a lazy country-fried jam swinging its weight around your speakers, off-handedly mentioning wrecks on the road and blood on one’s nose. “The Flesh of the Sky” is one of many references to the sky being some sort of terrifying living entity always getting ripped apart or having eyes that cry and its sound is that of a minimally-produced ’90s U2. The opening title track sounds like a supercharged Byrds tune, with Cacchione tossing off the line, “We woke up with no blood in our hearts/ Tryin’ to count all our Frankenstein parts.” On a very superficial level, Soft Black sounds to playing very straightforward rock tunes that could’ve been on the radio for the last 25 years; a closer listen reveals that this pop landscape- and Cacchione’s psyche- are haunted by the monsters of trash culture. These tunes, sometimes in major keys, would have been hopeful and idealistic in years past; Cacchione’s songs are the caves where monsters dwell.
The B-movie terror has its pinnacle on “I Am an Animal,” a sort of snot-nosed, punky cousin to TV On the Radio’s own zenith, “Wolf Like Me.” Here, there is no exterior monster but rather the seething, transforming sexuality of the otherwise childlike Cacchione; “If the smoke fills up my lungs/ I’ll be howlin’ in a jungle choir,” he sings during the quiet verse before the tune plummets headlong into the loud chorus. Verse/chorus/verse was the hallmark of ’90s grunge and I’ll be damned if it doesn’t sound good again here and Cacchione knows it; rarely does he sound this enthused on the rest of The Earth Is Black. The guitars here come their closest to aping the beasties that terrify poor little Vince. If there’s any justice on the web, this mp3 will break out and make tracks with the help of those wanting a little more adrenaline from their indie rock. The rest of the record, a sort of Tim Burton’s Magical Mystery Tour, plays well enough but I can’t stop listening to that one track.
by Chris Middleman
