Everyone Has “Soft Spots”, But Adult Mom Know It Better

Adult Mom are one band that should be always on my playlist. Hailing from Purchase, New York, Stepahanie Knipe started out Adult Mom as a bedroom project in 2012. In the following year, they transformed to be full band that we love so much.
Through the lens of queer, Adult Mom bring new things into indie pop spectrum since the beginning. Their debut LP Momentary Lapse of Happily on Tiny Engines explores a lot of personal secrets about coming out, sexuality, relationship, trauma, and vulnerability. Every lyrics is relatable because deals with inner or inter-relationship we have.
And Soft Spots is one the best presentation of Adult Mom yet. Just like the title, the music is relatively soft and cheerful. It’s not dramatic as I might think but the lyrics is always personal as I would call it cheerful melancholic.
Knipe tells us that everyone has soft spots. I’m thinking the spot is like avocado body and you touched particular parts on it too much and it went bad. It also means a bruise or trauma in person. Knipe attempts to understand those kind of things through Soft Spots. “I feel softness everywhere, soft spots that need to be found,” in ‘Tenderness’.
‘Full Screen’ may be a sweet pop song with catchy melody. However the song actually talks about the loneliness and need of being recognized as a queer. “And in romantic comedies, do you project my genderless body, onto the girl who loves you for what you were?”, Knipe sings.
Although you’re not a queer, Knipe lyrics still can make you feeling anxious and frustrated regarding relationship’s expectation. We’ll always get those thoughts in a relationship or friendship, right?
“One more song for old sake, I’ll be sad, you were ever in my life in the first place,” in ‘J Station is one of beautiful break-up lines for me. While ‘Patience’ is a love song for someone we always spend time with, “I am distracted easily, but sometimes I swear you are the only thing I see”.
I feel like ‘Drive Me Home’ is the song that questions your space and identity. “If I am really fucking good, will you (please take me home), validate me and create the space I can’t make.”
See. Adult Mom rule! This record got clever lyrics and important things to say, catchy as hell, resonating vocal, and depth emotions. What else do you need for an album of the year and beyond? For me, Soft Spots is not just another sad record, it’s a celebration of growing ache and a way to cope it becomes finding and embracing the pain spots without ending.

