Soft Bait – Life Advice (Flying Nun) (13th Floor Album Review)
Formed in 2020 in Tāmaki Makaurau, Soft Bait are a band that took shape before they ever took the stage. Their debut, Plot Points, written and recorded before playing a single gig, was literary, brooding post-punk built on relentless rhythm and tight, coiled tension.
It hit home with critics and fans. On their follow-up, Life Advice, Joshua Hunter (vocals), Patrick Hickley (guitar), Keria Paterson (bass), and Cameron Mackintosh (drums) return leaner and louder, shaped by the whiplash of live performance.
Their sound still carries the ghosts of Bauhaus, Gang of Four, early The Fall: a vocal intonation here, wiry guitar stab there, and propulsive drumming throughout. From current bands, Turnstile and Fontaines D.C. may be cousins sharing the same DNA of controlled chaos and cathartic crashes. Produced by De Stevens, the album has rawness, punch, and purpose in the mix, and enough space for each track to smoulder, combust, and explode.
The opener, Highly Recommended, sets the tone like a fuse being lit. A buzz of static, clean vocals pushed high in the mix, and a slow-building sense of threat. The repeated line “These things I like” lands like a warning and the volume creeps back up, as the desperation in Hunter’s voice increases. The band drops back, then climbs again. It’s a bold start that makes you lean forward.
Then New Leaf twists the frame. It begins with deadpan delivery “I heard, that’s not what I heard / It was something I knew nothing about” before spiralling into grotesque surrealism: “They’re sucking on feet.” It’s a brutal send-up of gossip, status anxiety, and performative reinvention. The band plays with fracture and flow: stop-start guitars, R&B inflected bass and drums, sudden bursts of noise and silence. It teeters on the edge of collapse, but never loses control.
Long Line locks in early as a thematic and sonic centrepiece. Hunter chants: “I come from a long line of arguments that happened before me / Real chip on the shoulder / A real chip off the old block.” With each repetition, the delivery shifts from defiant, to sardonic, and then resigned. It is a portrait of generational grievance, painted by a rhythm section that won’t quit, guitars that buzz and slash with wiry menace.
Throughout Life Advice, the band’s sense of dynamics has sharpened. Neighbourhood disorients with stabbing guitars and a swirling, urgent, vocal storm before letting go on the phrase “There it goes.” Oh Well grinds into a slow, gritty groove, as its menace deepens before lifting and then sinking back into the muck. “You’re simply the best of us” is the recurring lyric on the slower, rolling Applause which literally ends in the room filled with clapping.
Safe As Houses is a blast with powerful guitars, furious drums, and urgent vocals. Talk Too Much flips the script into euphoric energy. Over rolling drums and scratchy guitars Hunter declares “You know what they say”, then rides the wave into a cathartic, self-owning chorus. Sooner closes the album by drawing us into a dark, mysterious sonic atmosphere, where vocals are high in the mix, guitar tones blend, and drums tick along.
Life Advice expands Soft Bait’s sound with anger that is more precise, satire that cuts deeper, and quiet moments that are always tense. There are emotions here, but they come laced with an intelligence that ensures they stay controlled. These are songs that move fast and dare you to turn it up and take what you need. A band to hang on to for the ride.
John Bradbury
Soft Bait‘s sophomore offering, Life Advice, is out on the 25th July, both digitally and on black or silver vinyl LP. PRE-ORDER ‘LIFE ADVICE’ HERE
