Soft Plastics, is the new music project of Carey Mercer, former songwriter and leader of the critically acclaimed, indie-mainstay, Frog Eyes. The songs on their forthcoming new album, 5 Dreams (Paper Bag Records) were written by Mercer in the fall and winter of 2018–2019, mere months after the dissolution of Frog Eyes — the band Mercer shared for eighteen years with Mel Campbell and a rotating cast of musicians.
Today Mercer along with Mel Campbell and Shyla Seller who now compose this new band iteration and musical namesake, Soft Plastics: the name carries a tension. The sound of the words is sonorous, inviting; but the phrase describes an overwhelming force, a ubiquitous thing used to make so many other things, becoming slowly enmeshed in earth and water, permeating the flesh of living creatures. 5 Dreams leads off with the cerebral, “Rope Off The Tigers” and you can immerse yourself in the lyric video below.
5 Dreams is a 10 track post-punk, new wave, mariachi, new-wave mariachi, dub, hip hop, goth-rock infused romp, taking cues and according gobs of respect to Blixa Bargeld, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Talk Talk, Happy Mondays—all rung through the grime of a northern port city. It’s the interplay of the drums and the gelling effect of the synthesizer, the baritone running downhill with the bass, the trumpets and pedal steel filling up the gaps.
Mercer says: “The songs aren’t tied to a cohesive theme, but they do exist in a land that is deeply wet, dark, flooded—occasionally a gilded sun-beam comes out of nowhere and the song just stops and stares in bloody awe at what we are given, what we might see.”
