Varsity

"Varsity" from Soft Will finds Smith Westerns in a more introspective register, the glam ambition of Dye It Blonde giving way to something more interior and textured. The guitars here have a cleaner shimmer, less layered, more space allowed to breathe between the elements. The rhythm feels almost meditative, unhurried in a way that their earlier work rarely was, and that change in pace is itself the meaning — this is a band learning to sit with a feeling rather than accelerate through it. Omori's voice has matured slightly, still breathy and earnest, but with a new quality of restraint, as if he's learned that what you hold back carries as much weight as what you project. The song circles ideas of identity and performance, what it means to wear a particular version of yourself in front of others, the gap between who you are in institutions and who you are when no one is grading you. It has the feeling of a hallway between classes — not the drama of arrival or departure, but the suspended, slightly unreal in-between state. This is headphone music for public transit, for mornings when the day hasn't fully demanded anything of you yet, when you're allowed to be uncertain about which direction you're facing.