Reviews of ‘False Lights,’ ‘Wandermoon’

‘False Lights’ reviews

“…Infinitely hummable and as welcoming as an old comfy chair, False Lights is saturated with a warmth and intimacy that borders on narcotic.” — Sunrise Ocean Bender

“…tracks feature generous dollops of Beatles/Barrett whimsy, Robyn Hitchockian quirkiness, wacky production embellishments, and Anton Barbeau-styled technicoloured tomfoolery with surreal lyrics involving squids, goldfish, piranhas, Sid Vicious, Nagasaki, the Gestapo, ‘Halloween People,’ and psychological ‘Monsters of The Id.’ ” — Shindig magazine, June 2013

“…Songwriter Nathan Hall’s lyrics poke fun at modern mores and are at times funny, occasionally beguiling, but always memorable. His deadpan delivery doesn’t mask the fact that he actually writes some rather ace and catchy tunes.” — Harmonic Distortion

“…’FALSE LIGHTS’ should carry with it a warning from the W.H.O. (World Health Organization) simply because the melodies that the scientists produce attach themselves to your cranium and require surgery to remove (you have been warned!)” — Box of Dreams

“This album is full of twists and turns with ideas that are just waiting to be turned into insane cartoons that we’ll all laugh at in forty years.” — Plastik magazine

“…These words are not necessarily made to nestle comfortably into the music. They are unashamedly fanciful, observant and playful.” — The Miniature Music Magazine

“…it is more social comment than protest, a gentle prod swathed in psychedelic finery…” — The Terrascope (scroll down)

“‘False Lights’ sees the Soft Hearted Scientists exploiting their pop smarts to the max and pound for pound, I’d say it’s their most concise, hook laden effort so far – which is saying something.” — The Active Listener

‘Wandermoon’ reviews

Cardiff-based Soft Hearted Scientists christened their fourth album with their own word for escape from the drudgery of modern life. A wide-eyed trip through the valleys of South Wales, Wandermoon is often reminiscent of those other Welsh psychedelicists Super Furry Animals at their most whimsical. While the swirling climate change lullaby Tornadoes in Birmingham is gorgeously simplistic, it’s Road to Rhayader, with its martial percussion and allusions to “flowers floating in the air,” that really evokes the green green grass of home. — Robin Turner, Q Magazine

At Soft Hearted Scientists Cardiff HQ, the calendar sits forever at 1967 and Syd Barrett is house deity. . . . If Wandermoon often sails perilously close to outright mimickry, its obvious sincerity and dedication to beauty do much to redeem it. — Uncut magazine

Soft Hearted Scientists are yet another band spiritually indebted to Syd Barrett, dedicated to making music with a sense of wonder akin to “the sound of stars flying off the end of a wand”. Opener “Mountain Delight” fulfills that remit perfectly, finding them gazing into infinity over a bed of glockenspiel, acoustic and slide guitar. “The Trees Don’t Seem To Know That It’s September” is jocular British music-hall psych-pop, like long hair curling beneath a straw boater, while “Tornadoes In Birmingham” muses amusingly on how “the weather is altogether stranger than it used to be”. But no stranger, surely, than the multi-sectioned “Westward Leading”, an epic expedition evoking the “magic dust of an octomyth”. — Andy Gill, The Independent

“…. ‘Wandermoon’ takes psych folk to a new level. On a path laid by Gorky’s and SFAand originally Syd Barrett, Nathan Hall and company decorate the tracks not with Pixies and mushrooms but more mundane and realistic ideals.” — brfm.co.uk

Wandermoon’s appealing eccentricity lies in where the trippy melodies meet tales of everyday troubles, to maintain its grip on reality…. it balances the ordinary with the extraordinary, creating a trippy placebo to reveal the whimsy in day-to-day life. — Ruth Davies, Music OMH

Soft Hearted Scientists come across like ‘Andorra’-era Caribou doing mushrooms with Syd Barrett in the Super Furries’ overgrown back garden — sparkling psychedelic whimsy. — derry, Resident record shop, Brighton