Brooklyn downtempo project Soft Fangs carries the weight of the world on its shoulders. This is unabashedly melancholy music, evoking the intimate, breathy, mournful sound of Elliott Smith. Frontman John Lutkevich sounds lost, adrift amongst the quietly tense instrumentation that propels Soft Fangs from devolving into sad bastard music. Listened to in headphones, Soft Fangs sounds like a friend whispering secrets into your ears, like a city-boy version of Iron & Wine. Little bursts of swirling synth lends the affair a woozy feel to offset the earthy dynamics normally on display with Soft Fangs. This is music that is very easy to drift away to, to get taken up in the gauzy structures and get swept away by waves of unironic wistfulness. No one would ever mistake it for the coolest music, but it's effective.
SOFT FANGS, w/ No Big Seal, Cloud Cover, the Breakfast Cowboy, 8 p.m., Deadbeat Olympia, 226 Division St. NW, Olympia, $5, 360.943.0662
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