- The Soft Cavalry is the name of a new project by husband and wife team Steve Clarke and Rachel Goswell from the British soft shoegaze band Slowdive.
Clarke has been a backing muso and performer for many years, but this is the first time he’s written and produced his own material. It’s tempting to assess Soft Cavalry’s material through a Slowdive lense, but this is sufficiently different that it merits assessment in its own right.
While there is some variety among the album’s twelve tracks, it's still fair enough to file this one under the dream-pop category. The early songs have a bit more of an uptempo indie-rock feel about them, but the overall atmosphere is a soothing, billowing soundscape, with enough variation, light and shade to stop it getting too boring.
As a first release, this is a more than decent album and there is also the feeling that this is a band which still has room for further development. The singles from the album -Dive and Bulletproof - are solid enough, but for me things move on to more interesting territory with tracks like Spiders which take a bit more time and use it to paint a more diverse picture.
Soft Cavalry is a soothing, semi-sensual set of songs. It probably won’t get the heart beat racing, but there’s enough here to merit repeat listens. It would probably work better as a release if there were about six songs rather than twelve, but there is also enough there to create the feeling that there will be more good songs in the future. The Soft Cavalry isn't charging along taut nerve-endings, but, as per the name, that's hardly the intention. You will be rewarded when you listen for something subtler than the usual roar and thunder.
- Andrew Bartlett.