Canadian Band Softcult To Play New Bloom Festival
‘It gets really intense. I really call out misogyny and sexism at the shows and I kind of just go for the throat and I don’t stop. So I guess for some people it can be uncomfortable. For other people, it can be really cathartic and really everyone lets out their feelings at a Softcult show. I’d say expect to be challenged and expect to be incited into this Riot Grrrl movement.’
Speaking before arriving in Australia to appear at New Bloom Festival, Mercedes Arn-Horn is one half of a Canadian band Softcult that almost defies genre labelling. In fact, almost everything is a juxtaposition in a way that challenges your perception of what you think you know, and plenty of people are here for it.
‘We kind of have more of a shoe gazy, dream pop sound, but then the lyrics are very Riot Grrrl punk and they’re dark. I like the juxtaposition and I like the dichotomy of those two things.’
The duo are twins Mercedes and Phoenix Arn-Horn, and between them they are the voice of the voiceless. From their pointed, cutting lyrics to creating their own fanzine, the siblings are unrelenting in their message however that doesn’t mean they don’t enjoy themselves, they are fans too of New Bloom’s lineup.
‘We were so excited to be asked just because it’s all artists that I really enjoy listening to and that I look up to. I’ve been a huge fan of Fleshwater for a long time, so I can’t wait to see them play and hopefully get to meet them and get to know them. I really admire them and Touche Amore, obviously Movements we’ve played with before, they’re just really great. Citizen! I’m so excited! Honestly, the whole festival is so stacked and to be asked to be a part of it is really an accolade in itself. We get to play with bands that we just really like.’
The line up may well be stacked with talent however no one is quite like Softcult on the bill, another example of the bands steadfast uniqueness, or to coin the content of one of their songs One In A Million.
‘I think that it is sometimes an advantage to be an outlier in a lineup because you’re going to stand out just because you sound different and Softcult already is inspired by so many different genres. I wouldn’t say it’s a challenge, I like to think of it as maybe people who are coming to shows like that, they aren’t super familiar with Dream Pop or Shoegaze, but maybe we could be the band that is the gateway that opens them up to that world.’
The world itself is currently opening up to the band as evidenced by a recent cover story on the UK’s legendary Kerrang! Magazine.
‘We’ve had so much support in the UK, which is amazing! I love the scene over there too. The music scene is so inspiring and so many masters of the craft come from the UK, just bands that I look up to, Radiohead for example. It’s such a rich environment for creativity and so I feel really lucky that we are championed by so many people in the UK and so many media outlets and radio and stuff. It is honestly a kind of a surprise.’
Appearing as the cover story on a worldwide famous magazine is a sign that the winds are changing for the next generation and Softcult lead the way with their messages.
‘I mean anytime it’s recognised it’s an honour and then I think when media outlets like Kerrang! choose to have an artist like Softcult – It’s a woman and someone who presents as non-binary – and we’re really trying to spread this awareness and empowering message, a sort of feminist message, that it is really cool that a media outlet is actively choosing to give us a larger platform in order to raise that awareness and spread that message. So it means a lot to me – not just because it’s my band and obviously it’s very flattering and cool – but it means a lot to me because it just means we’re going to reach so many more people and hopefully empower those people.’
Tracks like Dress are direct and confront rape culture, Someone2me is about internet trolls while Heaven has been explained by Phoenix about those that preach tolerance and love but don’t practice it. Reviewers though have read different messages in these songs, something Mercedes delights in.
‘The beauty of art is it is subjective and I think people tend to project their own meaning onto art a lot of the time. So we might’ve written it about something, but if someone else relates to it and that it helps you process things and it helps you kind of find the meaning in it…so I’m not offended by it so long as the message is still something that I would be proud of and it’s not something that is completely misrepresenting what we’re trying to say. So far I’ve never seen anything like that other than the odd like, ‘oh, they hate men’ comment, which we get a lot, but we obviously don’t hate men. I think it’s important that people connect to it in their own way.’
Social media plays a huge part in everyone’s lives these days and Mercedes is acutely aware of – here’s that word again- the juxtaposition of the good and bad it brings to a generation that has to handle information like no generation before it.
‘It’s like a reflection of the times that we live in and because social media impacts society, it’s going to impact how we interact socially. It already has in a huge way. So maybe in the nineties you might hear heckling from the crowd if someone’s not feeling what you’re saying on stage. I feel like that happens less and less now, and it’s usually behind the screen, someone on the keyboard, and so in that sense maybe it’s a good thing. In other ways a lot of people are impressionable and they buy into things that they read on the internet, so there’s a responsibility to make sure you only put out there what you truly believe in and what you have fact checked and everything like that.’
‘But yeah, I would say musically it impacts the way we write because it impacts the way we see the world and interact with the world. For example, we have a song (‘B.W.B.B’) about Sarah Everard (a British woman kidnapped, raped and murdered by an off duty police officer in 2021) and had it not been for the internet, I don’t know if that story would’ve made it to Canada and specifically the song is about the insane victim blaming of that situation. That happened a lot, primarily on the internet was where you’d see those comments. So stuff like that is definitely a huge influence and we can see into the darkness of people’s psyche sometimes. I feel like they’re a lot less filtered when they are protected by anonymity.’
The music society itself has gone through many changes since Mercedes started out thirteen years ago, yet at times seems to have stood still, how does Mercedes view this?
‘I’d definitely say it’s going in the right direction. It is frustrating because it always feels like it’s so slow and it’s like a constant pushing this boulder up the hill for change. But I see a lot more representation now than I did when I was a teenager. So a lot more women in music, a lot more non-binary people. I see that this scene is becoming less gatekeepery, it’s not all just white artists in rock and roll anymore. You see a lot of different cultures that are bringing their influence and they’re helping the scene evolve and grow, which it needs to do. So it’s just really cool to see it be a lot more intersectional that way.‘
Once Australia is done, its doesn’t stop for Softcult.
‘So we have a little bit of time. We go on tour again at the end of June to do our headline run in the States, and then we’ve got some more stuff lined up for the fall touring wise. But what I’m really excited for is to sit down and start writing the next thing and really get creative, I feel like I haven’t written a song in a minute. We’ve been touring so much, which is great! I’m so excited about that, but it’s going to feel really good to get back into the creative mode again.’
After the stark thought-provoking action-inducing contrasts throughout the duos music and lyrics, there is one aspect which is perfectly in sync, well they are twins after all, and it’s the magic sound that only siblings can create.
‘It’s hard to say because I’ve never had a reality when I wasn’t making music with Phoenix. We’ve just always collaborated together, but I do notice from the outside that when siblings do make music together, there’s a chemistry there. There’s an understanding and a trust that – I think just speaking from my own experience – might be kind of hard to achieve that with someone else. I mean we hear it all the time. People say that the harmonies, right, our voices are really similar and we double track each other’s vocals. So when you hear the recordings it’s not clear who’s singing lead and so I think that’s something that’s really cool. I’ve always thought of Softcult as being two front people because we both sing and we both take on the duties basically. I just happened to be the one with the guitar and Phoenix happens to be the one on drums, but it really is a team effort.’
Interview By Iain McCallum
Catch Softcult at New Bloom Festival, tickets from Destroy All Lines…
On tour with Movements, tickets from Destroy All Lines…
