Soft Plastics - Saturn Return (2023) Hi Res

Saturn Return is the hotly anticipated debut album from Te Whanganui-a-Tara three piece Soft Plastics. Curating a wide range of influences, their music defies easy categorisation. Ranging from sun-bleached surf pop to swelling shoegaze, the songs are arranged with an investigative eye and a throughline of dry wit. What if we came at the guitars like this? What if The Ronettes were from Twin Peaks?

Saturn Return captures the many moods of the twenty-something spiral, wallowing in the lows just long enough to have some fun before saying ‘fuck it’ and starting the long walk back up. Singer and bassist Sophie Scott-Maunder seems to relish switching between mourning and eye-rolling. Her expressive delivery and wryly evocative lyrics play back various quarter-life crises with searing clarity. Jonathan Shirley’s guitars eddy in, layered and reverbed, bringing billowing dimension and texture. Deft, driving drums from Laura Robinson propel the album, building to a fizzing crescendo.

Recorded and mixed by James Goldsmith, Soft Plastics’ have created a captivating and generous record. It will feel bracingly familiar for anyone who has been put through Saturn’s wringer, and provide an illuminated pathway for those among us still ticking off their twenties.