Soft Drug, the emerging band that made waves with their debut EP Easy, is back with their latest single ‘Pasadena,’ delving even deeper into the mesmerizing world of Soft Drug Y2K. Building on their previous success, which saw them capture the attention of numerous playlists on Spotify, gracing the cover of Fresh Finds GSA, and earning coveted spots on New Music Friday playlists across several countries, as well as making their mark on the live circuit at the Great Escape Festival in Brighton UK and supporting acclaimed acts like Billy Nomates and Low Island, Soft Drug is ready to captivate audiences once again.
With ‘Pasadena’, Soft Drug invites listeners on a captivating journey, exploring themes of breaking free from the constraints of toxic masculinity. It’s an introspective voyage where definitive answers are elusive, and conformity is left behind. The song serves as a snapshot of this transformative path, evoking longing for a significant person and exploring the complexities of love, grief, and hope. It’s a heartfelt embrace that resonates with the deep emotions we can’t always control.
The band explains, “Our new single ‘Pasadena’ was written during a time when our singer Diva went abroad to fulfil is dream of spending some time in Los Angeles. he came back with a love story and tons of memories. back home in Berlin those feelings of missing and longing were a driving force to finish the song and capture a world that is not LA, not Berlin but a perfect dreamland of our own.”
With ‘Pasadena’, Soft Drug send you into a world that takes place between places of longing and real places in Los Angeles, between driving at night and eating ice cream in the afternoon, between joy and missing, between bedroom and baseball stadium.
A lo-fi electric guitar serves as the common thread, giving the impression that the song was recorded directly into the smartphone. But already in the prechorus, “Pasadena” unfolds its radiance, which goes far beyond the intimacy of a guitar song. It shimmers everywhere, synthesizers open up new spaces, and from the chorus on, the song finally takes off. Everything is held by the rolling 90s hip hop beat.
The biggest part of the video is that we actually filmed it from a real TV screen. we got some nice artifacts and were really amazed by how the screen light interacted with the camera lens. for the actual video we filmed live performance with a fish eye lens attached to an iPhone to emphasize the 2000s aesthetics. then we combined it with snippets of Diva’s time in LA. this way we covered us being in Berlin, the oversea world in LA and all the memories from the trip in one video.
An indie band that clearly feels at home in the contemporary R’n’B of the 2000s and is not afraid to make references. Be it in their music or in their visual world. Soft Drug take you on a journey into their world, which doesn’t gloss over anything, but in which you can completely let yourself go.
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Pasadena is out Sept 29th:
