Built like a top-heavy indie folk/rock jam but adorned with too much of an edge to be a track tailored to the needs of aging hipsters, Soup Review’s new single “Stars in Their Eyes on SSRIs” and its companion video represent a hybrid sound from a boldly colorful duo – and truly their most mature material thus far. While “Stars in Their Eyes on SSRIs” continues much of the concept offered to listeners in their 2018 debut album, this track touches on some cerebral components within the pair’s songwriting style that could potentially bring them more mainstream attention than they had previously achieved.

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Though stripped-down to its nuts and bolts (while still bearing the trademark eclecticisms of the band’s signature look and sound), the music video for this song is definitely a strangely excessive piece of content to examine. Centered on a pseudo-live performance that starts to feel like a dreamscape captured and documented in the far corners of YouTube, “Stars in Their Eyes on SSRIs” as a visual work is actually more brooding than its source material is. It’s almost as though the grittiness of the imagery reveals a vulnerability concealed within the happy-go-lucky nature of the harmony, and here, it’s left for us to embrace wholeheartedly.

There’s no trying to pigeonhole Soup Review’s sound, and now that they’ve proven capable of stacking the deck in a sophomore album, I think critics around the American underground are going to start taking note of their rising momentum. They’ve still got some creative rabbit holes to explore – in the right circumstances, of course – but if this is a glimpse into the future of their stylistic development, “Stars in Their Eyes on SSRIs” could be only the first in a series of provocatively postmodern releases under this moniker to stoke the interest of listeners around the world.

John McCall