In 2011 Luke Rathborne charmed the crap out of us with folky single "Dog Years," and it’s good to see the man has been keeping at it. The upcoming album "SOFT" (scheduled for a September release) is now presented as a group effort: "Luke" was dropped from the act’s name, and bio notes introduce them as ‘a band formed by Luke Rathborne & Darren Will’ – although Darren is still missing from the press shots.
From the preview single "Last Forgiven" (streaming) the project seems to have evolved in a poppier and more textural direction, without entirely losing the singer songwriter’s signature, in a metamorphoses that could be compared to the one undertaken by Luke Temple when he formed Here We Go Magic. What’s more important, the quality of the songwriting and the production are top notch here, so if the rest of the record is as good as this summery single, Rathborne’s music might keep company to a lot of people in the forseeable future.
We added this song to The Deli’s playlist of Best songs by emerging NYC artists – check it out!