Soft No are done playing it safe — hear new single ‘Oxford Street’

Philly’s Soft No Just Turned Up the BPM and We’re Fully Here for It

Philly indie quintet Soft No are gearing up to drop their new EP, ‘Super Neutral’, on local imprint Abandon Everything Records — and if the lead single is any indication, they’ve been holding out on us. In a good way.

First things first: go stream Oxford Street right now. We’ll wait.

Back? Good. So here’s the deal — after a well-received debut EP, Soft No decided to blow up their own formula. Collaborative writing sessions, a collective decision to crank the tempo, and a deliberate effort to let everyone’s influences bleed in freely. The result is five songs that feel less like a follow-up and more like a band finding a second, sharper gear.

Oxford Street hits like a lost early-2000s emo gem — think The Promise Ring, The Get Up Kids, The Anniversary — but filtered through something more jagged and present-tense. Richly-layered synths, strangled melodic guitar lines, urgently expressive vocals, and a pop song structure that sneaks up on you. It’s the kind of track that sounds familiar and totally fresh at the same time.

Drummer Jonathan Martello wrote the music, and it pulled something real out of vocalist Lannutti. “I don’t usually write about specific events in my life,” she says, “but I’d been wanting to write a song for years about a crazy night out, and the subsequent morning I had with a friend who passed away. I had the song title picked, but never felt like I had the right outlet for the song until now.” The lyrics land with that kind of weight — direct, literary, and quietly devastating. One passage in particular stops you cold: Saw you on the street last night / A blurry halo of orange light / And I can’t see straight but I remember / You said I could do so much better.

Lead guitarist and co-lead vocalist Austin Lotz summed up the band’s approach on this one pretty perfectly: “We did our due diligence to not overly critique these songs. We tapped into everyone’s tastes, and let the music come out naturally.” Rhythm guitarist Scott Signorino adds: “Everybody is more present on this EP.” And honestly, you can feel that.

‘Super Neutral’ — a title apparently born from the art of keeping the peace with family during politically charged holidays — is anything but neutral. It’s an emotionally cathartic, sonically adventurous collection from a band stepping out of its shoegaze comfort zone and into something that refuses to be pinned down by a couple of hyphens.

▶ Stream Oxford Street on Spotify