Yeule - Softscars (LP) - Blue Diamond Vinyl

Softscars lands like a secret you’ve been saving for years, only to finally say it out loud and feel the room change. Yeule has always blurred the line between digital erosion and human ache, but this 2023 record pulls their world into sharper relief. The release arrived on September 22, 2023 via Ninja Tune, and it finds the Singaporean-born, London-based artist trading some of the glassy hyperpop surfaces for serrated guitars, shoegaze haze, and hooks that stick. It is still coded in glitch, but now the wounds glow under buzzing amps.

That turn is obvious from the first plays of the singles. Sulky baby moves like a late-night spiral, all sugar-crusted melody and feedback that licks at the edges. Ghosts goes bigger, with a chorus that feels like the roof coming off, the drums smashing into a wide-open sky. Dazies drifts tender and bleary, the kind of song that remembers the exact color of a summer you thought you forgot. None of this is nostalgia cosplay. Yeule treats the 90s alt-rock toolkit like fresh clay, folding crunchy guitars into vapor trails of synths and pitch-shifted harmonies. The result is heavy and weightless at once.

Critics heard it right away. Pitchfork tagged Softscars with Best New Music, and Stereogum named it Album of the Week, both noting the way yeule sharpens their songwriting while keeping the project’s otherworldly core intact. That matters because Softscars is, at heart, a songwriter’s album, even when the noise crests. The title track holds the thesis: scars that stay soft, so they don’t turn you into something unrecognizable. In interviews around the release, yeule spoke about holding pain rather than hardening around it, and you can feel that care in the way their voice sits in the mix, close enough to see the breath on the glass.

What makes these songs pop is the contrast. Verses whisper, choruses rip. Guitars spray color, then drop into a pocket where tiny digital details flicker, like a memory half redacted. Yeule’s voice glides between sighs and a gleam that cuts, stacking harmonies that feel hand-placed. The programming stays tactile, not sterile, and the bass often hits with the thud of a basement show rather than a pristine studio flex. You hear a band in the room, even when the machines are doing the heavy lifting.

It also plays brilliantly as an album, not just a set of singles. The sequencing breathes. Heat, release, reflection, then a final lift. I kept thinking of those records that sat in the front bins at the shop because people passed them around by word of mouth, not marketing blare. If you’re chasing that kind of feeling, the Softscars vinyl is the way to live with it. The low end opens up, the guitars smear in a pleasing way across the stereo field, and the vocals sit warmer and more human. If you’re crate-digging and spot yeule vinyl, grab it, and if you need to buy yeule records online, this is the one to start with. There are already a few yeule albums on vinyl, but this one bridges the early net-crystalline aesthetic and a new, guitar-forward bite.

The cultural timing also feels right. 2023 was full of artists bending shoegaze and alt-pop into new shapes, but Softscars stands out because the songs work even if you strip the paint. You could play Ghosts on an acoustic and it would still hurt. Then plug back in, and it feels like the floor drops two feet. That trick is harder than it sounds. It takes a writer who knows what to leave out, and a producer who trusts space. Yeule nails both.

For collectors, consider where you’re buying, since pressings can vary. A clean copy from a trusted Melbourne record store or a reputable site that ships vinyl records Australia wide will do the music justice. Softscars rewards that level of care. It is a bedroom confession scaled to a stage, a computer dream plugged into a human heartbeat. By the time the last track fades, you’ve got that rare thing, a record that invites you back not out of habit, but because it keeps showing new corners of its bruise-blue light.