Softcult, the duo of twin Toronto siblings Mercedes and Phoenix Arn-Horn, earned Stereogum Band To Watch honors back in 2023. We've continued to watch them since then, and they have continued to crank out extremely pretty guitar music without releasing a proper album. Lately, they've been operating one single at a time, and now they've followed the last one, April's "Pill To Swallow," with the hazy new jam "Naive."
"Naive" is one of those songs that's quiet and loud at the same time. The vocals and gauzy and rapturous, and the twinkly riffs will crush you delicately, like they're pressing a flower. There's a lot of shoegaze music like this out there in the world, but this one stands out for sheer prettiness. In a press release, Softcult say that it's a song about "the moment the scales fall from our eyes after we realize we’ve been romanticizing someone or the idea of someone," but this isn't exactly lyrics-first music.
As usual with this band, "Naive" has a moody, no-frills video that Mercedes Arn-Horn directed. Check it out below.
The "Naive" single is out now on Easy Life Records.
