Softee's latest album, 'Natural', is out now on City Slang!

Softee’s take on getting through life is poetically summed up by her own words: “feeling the anxiety but sort of dancing wildly through it.” 

Nina Grollman’s moniker, Softee, isn’t just a sardonic nod to the thrifty, soft-serve giant, it’s an earnest, sometimes painfully so, descriptor of the Brooklyn-based artist’s approach to love and music. Her work is a kaleidoscopic exploration of wrought emotion, tinged with influences as sundry as Robyn, Janet Jackson, and the pure, unfettered melodrama of 80s pop. But whether she’s wrestling through a heartbreak, or making sense of her sexuality, Softee weaves her anxiety and unrest into urgently joyful, angsty queer pop. 

Her song “Crush,” featured on the 2022 Queer as Folk reboot, was described by Rolling Stone as “a swooning synth-pop gem that opens up at the bridge with a stream of strings that give the song a vintage disco feel, like glittery teardrops hitting the dance floor,”). Back in the day, the Moorhead, Minnesota-born artist remembers Fargo-esque winters in her makeshift bedroom studio: recording Katy Perry covers and uploading them to Youtube, writing songs, and unleashing the emotional rhythm that would eventually lead her to experiment with loop pedals across New York City DIY stages alongside Linda Diaz, Sir Babygirl, Blake the man 1000 and Francesca D’Uva.

Sometimes, Mitski feels life would be easier without hope, or a soul, or love. But when she closes her eyes and thinks about what’s truly hers, what can’t be repossessed or demolished, she sees love. “The best thing I ever did in my life was to love people,” she says. “I wish I could leave behind all the love I have after I die, so I can shine all this goodness, all this good love that I’ve created onto other people.” She hopes her newest album, The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We, will shine love long after she’s gone. That’s precisely how it feels: like a love that’s haunting the land.

“This is my most American album,” she says. The music feels like a profound act of witnessing this country, in all of its private sorrows and painful contradictions. Sonically Mitski’s most epic and wise album, the songs introduce wounds and then actively heal them. Here, love is time-traveling to bless our tender days, like light from a distant star.

It's full of the ache of the grown-up, seemingly mundane heartbreaks and joys that are often unsung but feel enormous. It’s a tiny epic. From the bottom of a glass, to a driveway slushy with memory and snow, to a freight train barreling through the Midwest, and all the way to the moon, it feels like everything and everyone is crying out in pain, arching towards love. Love is that inhospitable land, beckoning and then rejecting us. To love this place, this earth, this America, this body takes work. It might be impossible. The best things are.

#1 girlfriend; /ˈnəmbər wən ˈɡərlˌfrend/, noun: Someone (regardless of gender) whom someone else (also regardless of gender) wishes to be romantically involved with.

check out my music blog: strawberry-blonde-radio.tumblr.com and my music twitter: @strwb3rry_blnd3

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