Every artist eventually comes up against the inevitable writer’s block. It’s not fun, to say the least. But for Soft Streak, it’s something they’re not only learned to work around, but to grow from.
The LA-based duo, Tori Schachne and Colton Toy, met in college in the early 2010s, and have spent the last decade making music in multiple iterations. In 2018, they released their first single, “Ride”, as Soft Streak, a breezy electric pop project featuring Colton’s airy keyboard work and Tori’s easy going, smooth vocals.
The duo’s recently released single, “Alone”, is a bit of a sonic departure, swapping electric sounds for a piano leading the stripped down ballad that puts Tori’s lyrics, unmasked, at the forefront. But to understand how the band got there, we have to back up a few years.
It wasn’t long after Soft Streak formed that the pandemic hit, and the two found themselves at home, looking for an outlet. “We were consuming a lot, we were cooking a lot, [and] I didn’t feel super creative,” Tori said. They decided to join a weekly online writing group, where songwriters gathered for video calls to workshop new ideas.
“That was really helpful,” Tori said. “A lot of creation happens in a bubble, and not that everything needs feedback, but sometimes it’s nice to be like, ‘is this doing what I want it to be doing’? Or just understanding how someone else might be perceiving it.”
Pretty soon, Soft Streak was creating a steady string of singles, eventually refining the ones they loved to create two EPs, 2022’s Insider Baseball, and a forthcoming EP the duo’s been steadily releasing singles from.
Some of the big sonic influences for the EPs came from Soft Streak’s listening habits— lots of Andy Shauf, Neopholic, Weyes Blood, and Waxahatchee. But another big influence was the band’s visual background. Both Tori and Colton have experience in music video editing, and the two often use visuals as another medium of creativity, either directing their own videos, or creating little shorts.
“It’s a nice way, if you’re in a rut creatively, to do something related but not totally in the same box,” Tori said. “We had a music video where I was on the toilet in different settings, and I had the idea for a long time, but we weren’t sure what song we could fit into it. I didn’t write the [“A Woman on the Verge”] thinking of that concept, but then it sort of worked out that they came together in that way.”
The visuals also give Soft Streak a chance to share a little more of their humor. “There’s a fun side, even if the music isn’t necessarily upbeat stuff,” Colton said.
That being said, the duo’s up for whatever experience the listener wants to have with the music. With their latest track, “Alone”, the duo had a few versions of the track with bigger production, but opted for the barebones form, “to be more honest, or truthful and concise,” Tori said.
She continued:
“Maybe something about why we wanted EPs is because We wanted to just start putting stuff out, and now it’s out of our hands. We made something and it’s in the world, and people can do whatever they want with it, or have whatever reaction they want.”
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Words by Sofar Editorial Team
Photo credit: Soft Streak, photo by silken weinberg
