You could get together with three of your friends, a rusty four-track, and you’d no doubt come up with an effort similar to The Soft Pack’s self-titled debut LP. However I’m yet to decide if this is a good thing.The initial signs are promising; Vauxhall-friendly opening track ‘C’mon’ kicks things off with a minute or so of raw rock, but at this point even the band start to sound bored of what they’re doing. The lazily drawled chorus of “Ah, c’mon” starts to grate, and within two minutes they appear to have run out of ideas completely. It’s the same on the follow-up ‘Down On Loving’, where after a minute they spend a short while repeating the mantra “down on loving” and ”“ more annoyingly ”“ dragging out the word “down” for a couple of seconds.This lazy approach to songwriting belies the energy that the LA-based four-piece put into their music. There’s a brilliantly fuzzy guitar solo during ‘Down On Loving’ (sandwiched, unfortunately, by those grating vocals), and the frantic pace of ‘Move Along’ is upheld brilliantly by David Lantzman’s bass playing. Sadly these moments are few and far between, as the rest of The Soft Pack is unfortunately dull. Certain tracks, such as ‘More Or Less’, are rendered unlistenable thanks to Matt Lamkin’s awful vocals, while ‘Mexico’ is spoiled by an over-distorted and out of tune guitar solo.Still though, it’s difficult to actually hate the album too much. There’s a heavy dose of enthusiasm injected into each song, and the pace is such that it proves incredibly difficult not to tap along. But ultimately a poor recording quality and half-baked ideas count against The Soft Pack. Stick it on in the background then, but don’t pay too much attention or else the cracks really start to show.