The name game: The Soft Pack interview

The name game: The Soft Pack interview


"WE'RE not good looking. We don't dress cool. We don't have Rod Stewart hair. We're just four normal guys whose fucking songs are catchy."

Well, let's see about that. The Soft Pack, formerly The Muslims, are one of 2009's most in demand bands, tipped by the great and good for success. The Velvet Underground, Iggy & The Stooges, The Strokes - if they are American and amazing, this band have been compared to them.

But this doesn't seem to have gone to their head. Watching them soundcheck upstairs at an East End pub, an amp blows up, so we take the chance to grab guitarist Matty McLoughlin for a chat on the fire escape stairs. He is open, honest, but pretty disinterested to begin with. Having just jumped off a plane and headed straight here, he doesn't even know what day it is.

"Why do people like us? I don't know, it's definitely to do with luck, but we like the songs we write," he says, droll and understated. "We sound a lot better if everyone's drunk, ten times better if you've been drinking."

So if there is nothing special here, where do the comparisons come from? "I don't mind it," he admits. "Velvet Underground? I love them. Then, people say The Strokes, which I don't really get. If I was to describe our band to, say, my dentist, I would say 'Oh, we sound like The Strokes, rock music, clean guitars'. But if you actually listen to music, you can definitely hear deeper things than The Strokes."

The way those particular New Yorkers suavely wandered to the heights of cool at the start of the millennium was based on hype and haircuts as much as music, but they did produce the songs to back it up. The Soft Pack have picked up a similar buzz, so can they do the same? "Each song we write becomes like my favourite song, I feel like we're progressing as a band," he nods, animated.

"We've had a rotating cast, four drummers and four or five bassists. Now, with these guys everything just clicked. They are really good musicians and me and (singer Matt Lamkin) are not that good, so they hold it down and we can screw around a little bit."

This lax attitude to their talent is repeated when the subject of their name change from - shock, horror - The Muslims comes up. "We expect to get asked about it. Every interview we've ever done, it's been the first question. We don't really care about it, I don't understand why it's controversial."

Changing the name has got more press than keeping it, so was it all a PR stunt? "Oh, sure, we're going to start changing it, every three months," he smirks. "We've got a new stunt, we've got things up our sleeve, we're gonna hit it hard. The name and image aren't that important. If you have good songs, you'll be ok."

Onstage tonight, this is confirmed. They don't even air breakthrough single Nightlife, but Parasites' clashing riffs sound suitably filthy and Extinction is filled with bite and verve. Without being unaccomplished, they play with refreshingly unfussy roughness, cajoling the crowd with their charge and craft rather than charisma.

Matty is right though, they don't have that undistinguishable, but succinct, quality of simple coolness. "There is a bit of a backlash against trying too hard," he dismisses. "Pretending to be some fucking dude you read about in a book, leather jacket cool, cocaine, it's fucking false anyway."

"The only thing we expect of ourselves is to make good records and tour. You can't kid anybody, we aren't good enough to, we just have to play with sincerity.

So, with the time ripe for an assault on the wider consciousness of what's next for the band? "Touring, more touring, festivals, then we're aiming to have the album out in September. It will be all new songs, except we've re-recorded Parasites.

It could, of course, all go wrong before then. Hype bands are as rare as drizzle and what if internal implosions occur? "No, We're all friends, we've set rules out, and learnt how to do it. Our first tour was a fucking mess. Everyone knows how it works now. We're gonna keep doing it regardless of how well we do." That attitude could be the key to doing well – even if they do think Rod Stewart's cool.