It took over two decades, but the Softies are back.
And their timing couldnt be more perfect.
Theyre also hitting the road for a fall tour.
Alicia J Rose*
Rose Melberg invented Sad Girl, I was recently informed at a gig by someone born in the Nineties.
That combination is now basically whatindie rockis.
Melberg is a name that most music fans still dont recognize, but as the O.G.
Rose Melberg makes no apologies for a life spent making the world safer for miserable songs.
Just be interesting and sad at the same time.
Or just be sad fine.
The world is a sad place sometimes.
The Softies spent the Nineties recording for labels like K and Slumberland, touring with friends likeElliott Smith.
But Melberg kept thriving at her usual madly prolific pace.The Bed I Madeis hernineteenthalbum.
Shes the kind of artist whoinspires tribute albumswhile shes still going strong.
She spent this past summer on tour playing guitar with riot-grrrl pioneersBratmobile.
And in the 2020s, there are entire genres based on what the Softies were doing in the Nineties.
Jen and I, we lost our moms within a month and half of each other, Melberg says.
It was really rough and disorienting, and life was just feeling really kind of heavy.
It was just time.
ROSE MELBERG FIRST turned heads in the early 1990s, with her Sacramento indie-pop band Tiger Trap.
(Supercrushis still a timeless banger.)
Then she formed the Softies as a guitar duo with her fanzine pal Jen Sbragia.
And thirty years later, here we are still best friends.
Theyre used to connecting across the miles Rose lives in Vancouver, Jen in Portland.
In our thirty-year friendship, weve only lived in the same place for one year.
Jen is in Oakland on tour with her band, already dressed to kill for tonights gig.
They lavish compliments on each others fits, with their matching glasses.
Did they color-coordinate eyewear for this chat?
No, Rose says.
We always did feel like outsiders, Melberg says.
We had our feet in a lot of different scenes, but we never fit in anywhere.
We did feel like weirdos.
We were always the awkward band on the bill that was too quiet, or not acoustic enough.
But they hit a nerve with audiences, with their emotional candor.
Seeing the Softies live back in the day was like a hushed explosion.
A hush would fall on the crowd, spontaneously.
We got so used to people talking so loud, we could barely hear ourselves play, Rose says.
But we had to stand our ground.
Yet they never came off nervous, never stared at the floor.
You dont have to be good.
You just have to really want to be there.
Bands like the Softies seemed to represent a bygone golden age for feminist punk.
But nobody realized yet was how much the future would sound like the Softies.
The sad girls have never been louder.
Festival slogan: Love Rock Revolution Girl Style Now.
She was 19, a nervous wreck, singing Any Day.
Technically I guess thats the first song I wrote, but I hadnt reallywrittenit.
I just played the only chords I knew.
The lyrics are nonsensical I wrote them on the Greyhound bus, on the way up to Olympia.
So she plugged it in.
I didnt even say my name.
I just got up there, played a song, walked off, went to the bathroom and cried.
She started Tiger Trap, a pioneering indie-pop outfit of four women.
Fans called them cuddlecore or cardigan punk; non-fans called them twee.
Tiger Trap made one excellent album, but their brush with fame was enough to turn off Melberg.
We got too popular too fast, she says.
We played wild big showsparties, rock & roll hijinks, drugs and alcohol and all that stuff.
I just felt, I dont think this is for me.
This doesnt quite fit in with what feels like punk to me.
I started to think, What can I do thatwontbe popular?
Jen was a Tiger Trap fan, so she came to all the shows in the Bay Area.
One day, Jen just phoned me out of the blue.
I heard you guys broke up.
I just wanted to check in and see if you were okay.
And that was it.
I just said, Come visit me in Sacramento.
And she came that weekend.
Thats when we wrote our first song.
You showed me Love Seat, Jen nods.
Then I wrote the guitar part.
We drank red wine.
A LOT of red wine, Rose says.
And we wrote a song.
They soon came up with a name.
It was maybe the second or third time we hung out, in Santa Rosa.
Jen had a Fifties ladies magazine with a quiz: Are You A Softie?
Jen picked up guitar in her headbanger days.
I was very into mainstream heavy metal in the Eighties, as a teenager, she says.
For her, punk was a different state of mind.
I was just like, Weirdest thing Ive ever heard, but okay, thanks, Power Guy.
She started the group Pretty Face in Santa Rosa.
Theres a flyer that has Pretty Face and Tiger Trap on it together.
Its framed in my hallway at home.
Everybody was just doing their own thing, she says.
Thats what turned me onpeople telling true stories.
They were on the label alongsidekindred spiritslike Elliott Smith.
They bonded over music they loved the Kinks,the Everly Brothers.
We were both very tender people and I was very drawn to Elliot for that reason.
We had a sweet friendship.
And we could not touch what he did.
If you closed your eyes, he sounded like he had three or four hands.
Their legends are linked in many ways but especially in terms of putting themselves out there as tunesmiths.
The thing with saying hard stuff, the world doesnt end.
The song might make you cry, but it isnt doing any damage.
Its not hurting anyone.
MEANWHILE: REAL LIFE.
Melberg and Sbragia grew up, as the band took a back seat in their hectic adult lives.
We live far away from each other, Rose says.
After the Softies final album in Y2K, they moved on.
Do you know what I do for a living?
I own a cat supply store.
I have a wildly successful business in Vancouver.
Its calledHappy Cat Feline Essentials.
Its the cutest, best store in the world.
We really created a communityInstagram-famous cats will visit, and the whole thing just keeps growing.
Were just about to celebrate our five year anniversary.
I did not have a normal job, for pretty much all my adult life.
I was just doing music for all of my twenties and thirties and forties.
So this is my first real job.
I thought, okay, I need to get a jobIm running out of money.
But I cant have a boss because Im too sensitive.
So I was like, Guess I have to start my own business.
What could I do?
As a diehard feline lover, her choice was clear.
Im super passionate about cats, she explains.
So my whole life is cats.
Obviously, this is one aggressively on-brand move for a Softie.
Occasionally fans will come in, she reports.
A fan will come in and say, I heard Rose Melberg owns this store.
I have two very different lives, but its sweet when they come together.
Its a pretty cool mission to have in lifeto help cats.
It feels pure and noble.
Sbragia is a freelance graphic designer.
A little bit underemployed right now, just because I am doing so much music stuff.
But I can work from anywhere, which is cool since Im on tour.
The Bed I Madeis full of adult reckonings.
Then we thought, Oh yeah THIS is the thing we love doing the most.
Time to make another Softies record.
It didnt feel like a reunion.
It didnt feel like a novelty.
Its not a comeback.
Its just this linear, natural thing that that we finally had time to do.
We fell back into the Softies, and it was so fucking fun.
Yet they realized it was time because of another adult rite of passage: grief.
When they both lost their moms, the songs began to flow.
It made the 24 years since our last album seem like nothing had passed.
It was just, Oh, better get writing.
Better write some Softies songs.
It just felt very natural.
But we became a lifeline for each other.
They collaborated closer than ever in emotionally raw tunes like Dial Tone.
Jen wrote the first half, I wrote the second half.
We dont usually write songs like that its normally one person or the other who writes the lyrics.
But trading off lyrics was cathartic.
We gave each other these songwriting prompts, Jen says.
Rose gave me a prompt of birthday.
But even amid the grief, the album is also a tribute to the power of long-haul friendship.
Id been kind of waiting for Jen to be ready, Melberg confesses.
Ive never stopped writing songs.
But I wasnt writing Softies songs, and thats different.
People can be very dismissive, Melberg says.
Its like the character of Lili Taylor inSay Anything, with her Joe lies songs.
And brave, which is what it always comes back to as a female-presenting person.
Im like, no, its very brave to be vulnerable and to make art so beautiful.
When youre making something so fragile, it can be broken at any time.
Someone can break the spell, someone can yell you suck from the audience, and everyone hears it.
Its a vulnerable experience, putting that emotion out in the world.
But making those vulnerable moments happen has been her artistic calling for over three decades now.
But just giving people permission to feel hard feelingsthats what you hope for when you write those songs.
Of course, the Softies arent the only ones who are feeling sad songs extra deep these days.
I dont know maybe the world needs it, Melberg muses.
But I do know WE need it.
