SOFT PLAY are back in town: "We've been afforded a second bite of the metaphorical apple"

A lengthy hiatus. A change of name. A comeback single featuring Robbie bleedin’ Williams. SOFT PLAY have gone through a lot over the past few years - but now the boys are back in town.

Words: Jake Hawkes.
Photos: Sarah Louise Bennett.

Releasing a new album is daunting for any band. New songs, a new sound, a new chance to be judged by fans and critics – it's enough to make anyone nervous. With SOFT PLAY's new full-length 'HEAVY JELLY', though, there's more than just a few new songs to think about.

Anyone who's been following the band will know the story by now. Formerly known as Slaves, the duo released three Top 10 albums before calling an unexpected hiatus that ended up lasting for years. Solo projects followed for both singer/drummer Isaac Holman and guitarist Laurie Vincent, and then, in late 2022, they announced their return. Years of questions about how appropriate the name 'Slaves' was for two white men from Kent, coupled with a feeling that it didn't really represent who they were any more, meant they came complete with a whole new moniker – SOFT PLAY. It's a soft reset for the band (Geddit? – Ed) and one that was sorely needed. "I feel like we get to be SOFT PLAY for the first time, rather than us coming back as the same band we were," says Laurie, drinking a hot Americano on the sweaty patio of a Tunbridge Wells coffee shop/community centre.

"Our relationship is the best it's ever been, and we're making the best music we've ever made," agrees Isaac, sipping a much more temperature-appropriate iced coffee. Throughout the interview, the two are relaxed and chatty with each other, cutting in to finish sentences or add to what the other is saying. Band reunions are usually either due to a genuine love and feeling of unfinished business or a cash grab from people who realise they aren't quite as bankable when going solo as they are together – it's safe to say SOFT PLAY's decision to reunite is firmly in the former camp.

The decision to get back together may have been easy and natural, but that's not to say there weren't plenty of nerves about stepping back to the plate after several years away. SOFT PLAY is a very different beast to Slaves; more confident and more comfortable in their skin, Isaac and Laurie have leaned into the silliness found on their very earliest material while broadening out their influences to the point of including mandolins and rap hooks about worms wriggling around on the pavement.

"There was always the worry that nobody would care," acknowledges Laurie with a laugh. "You see some people trying to come back now, and the internet age moves so quickly that it just bombs completely, so the huge reaction makes me feel like we've been afforded a second bite of the metaphorical apple. The way we've come back has been so entertaining and so engaging for us that it's kept it all feeling really good and bright."

The reference to brightness is important. The band have spoken in previous interviews about how badly relations between the two of them had got by the end of their first run, with Laurie acknowledging their "heart wasn't in it anymore". A direct and understandable result of spending 24 hours a day together for several years, it was still an atmosphere neither wanted to be a part of. "There are moments I like on our last two records, but to be honest, they both felt like freefalling," Laurie continues. "We didn't have a grip of what we wanted or what we were doing at all."

This feeling of anxiety might have continued until the band were driven into the ground, but deteriorating mental health and personal tragedies made even that an impossibility. "We try and keep it fairly light when we do interviews, but it's no exaggeration to say that both of our lives just completely fell apart," says Laurie. "Literally fell apart as badly as they could. It went from, 'You're really pissing me off, and I don't enjoy this anymore'. To, 'Oh no, we're both having really awful, horrible things happen to us'. So we had to call time on it; there was no space for the band because we were both trying to rebuild our lives.

"The flipside of that is that it finally made us realise that the band isn't as important as our lives, so when we came back and were able to do it again, there was an appreciation there that we just didn't have before. Our next album would have been dog shite if we'd tried to carry on!"

"Yeah, it definitely would have been," says Isaac with a laugh. "We wouldn't have had the chance to go off and, cheesy as it sounds, do the work on ourselves and come back together in a different headspace – it would have been the same shit, but much worse."

Instead of the career-ending flop we'd have got in 2020, 'HEAVY JELLY' is the album SOFT PLAY have always had in them but never quite managed to make. Tracks like 'The Mushroom and The Swan' are searingly heavy in parts before retreating into electronic interludes with a confidence that simply wouldn't have been there on previous efforts. The band's inherent humour also shines through on almost every track, from the choral opening of 'All Things' to the absurdity of 'John Wick', one and a half minutes of chaos punctuated by Isaac screaming "I'm John Wick, bitch" over and over.

It's a patchwork quilt of influences and styles that manages to dance at the edges of what SOFT PLAY have been before, bringing in new sounds when it makes sense but staying tight and coordinated throughout. Combining the scrappy humour of album one, the wide-ranging magpied influences of album two, and the tight focus of album three, it feels like the band are finally at the peak of what they can do.

"Getting the balance on this record has been really hard," says Laurie. "It's been a real jigsaw puzzle because with things like 'Worms on Tarmac', it feels too funny or silly to include a track about a worm wriggling around on the floor. But it all comes back to being authentic, and allowing our personalities to come across and refusing to shut things down. Once, when we were 21, I was playing a Title Fight record in the van, and Isaac said he didn't like it. Those weird little statements you both make to each other cut things out, and you never explore those avenues again. It's nice now to be able to allow ourselves to explore them and find a place in our own music where we can use those references and make them our own. People always ask us what songs mean or what the subtext is, but they've overthought it so much – we're just having a laugh."

"You can't dissect 'Worms on Tarmac'," adds Isaac. "Is this a look at humanity's place in the universe? Nah, mate, it's about worms. I literally wrote 'Bin Juice Disaster' about having a disaster when taking the bins out – I pretty much wrote it on the spot. But last time around, we were taking ourselves way too seriously for me to have even dreamed of suggesting to Laurie that we put something like that on the album. After the experience of making this record, I won't have those feelings as much. I'll write a song about anything, even eggs. I'm not kidding you; sometimes I eat fifteen eggs a day." (Is that healthy? – Ed.)

It's not just an emotional closeness that Isaac and Laurie have rekindled with their return, but a geographic one, too. By the third Slaves album, Laurie was living in Brighton, and Isaac was in East London, seeing each other mainly for gigs and recording rather than hanging out as mates. The decision to move back to Kent, and to Tunbridge Wells specifically, was one each made independently, but it's made them realise how important their friendship is and how necessary it is to centre it around other interests, not just music.

"I didn't decide to come back to Tunbridge Wells," says Isaac. "The decision was made for me because my mental health was so bad that I needed to be here being looked after by my parents. Then I met a girl, and now I have a little family here, and then Laurie came back, so I feel so settled that I don't think I'll ever leave – this is my home."

"It's taken a while to work out," adds Laurie. "First, Isaac would babysit for me when we weren't doing the band. Then we tried to get the balance between who we are as friends and how the music fits into that. We've never had space to do that before because there was always an underlying resentment that came with the distance – just little things like me being angry Isaac wasn't inviting me out in London, but Isaac assuming I wouldn't want to come because I was down in Brighton, stupid stuff like that. But now it's the sweetest it's ever been. We see each other in the gym every other day, just little check-ins with each other, which put our friendship at the forefront.

"We have two completely separate lives going on, but our shared experience is so unique because of the amount we've been through. It's more intense than being brothers because we didn't get to 18 and move out and do different things; we were stuck together in this weird friendship marriage. If we want to be in a band, we have to deal with each other, and that's great, but it can also be a lot of pressure."

A reorientation of their relationship to be closer and more wide-ranging but less intense has also meant that when they do see each other, they have new experiences to share and talk about. On a larger scale, both Isaac and Laurie's non-SOFT PLAY projects, Baby Dave and Larry Pink the Human, were wildly different to what either of them had done as Slaves and from each other. This musical divergence allowed both to explore the songs they felt they couldn't make under the moniker of their band, as well as bring new influences and knowledge back to the table when they did reform.

"Lyrically, it felt like Isaac found his mojo again," says Laurie, to a nod from Isaac. "He found freedom with Baby Dave and experimented more – that's why we lifted 'Mirror Muscles' and 'Worms on Tarmac', which was going to be a Baby Dave song before I nicked it for SOFT PLAY. I learned a lot about songwriting when I did my project, thinking about songs and the whole process of production. I produced a lot of demos for the new album with that knowledge, whereas before, we'd turn up to the studio and only have an iPhone recording.

"The main thing is there's just age and perspective now. We were locked into a cycle with Slaves of going back to back to back without any time to consider anything that was happening. This time, we've been able to look at what felt good and what didn't without anyone rushing us. We've just matured, really. What it also did was make me realise that the grass is always greener. Doing Larry Pink made me remember that I just love playing my guitar really, really loud, and it made me think that our band was fucking great and a privilege to be in, and we weren't doing it. That was definitely part of the impetus for getting back together."

"For me personally, the vulnerability of the solo stuff led into what we are now," says Isaac. "I don't think that we'd have put out a tune like 'Everything and Nothing' when we were together before."

A heartfelt tribute to loss and love, centred around the death of Isaac's good friend Bailey and written when Laurie had not long lost his partner, Emma, to cancer, album closer and recent single 'Everything and Nothing' is without a doubt the most personal song the band have ever written. Despite this, it isn't a maudlin ballad which sits out of place, instead walking the tightrope by keeping the heaviness of the band's usual output while giving the lyrics the space they need to breathe. It's also the first certified banger of a rock song to prominently feature the mandolin since R.E.M.'s 'Losing My Religion'.

"That was a tough one," acknowledges Isaac. "Releasing that was nerve-wracking, but the reaction has been amazing. We've had nothing but love. Well, maybe three dickheads on social media, but usually it's half and half, so I'm still counting that as a win! It's nuts; we've never had that kind of reaction to a tune before because people know what to expect from us. Usually, it's heavy, it's hard, it's silly, but to be connecting with people on a deeply emotional level feels mad to us. Fucking amazing, but mad."

"It comes back to the record as a whole," adds Laurie. "It sums up our personality. If you listen to 'Worms on Tarmac', Isaac is actually like that; we have those conversations, and the lyrics come from that; it isn't contrived. With the mandolin, I'm weirdly impulsive, but I also follow through with my actions. One day, I decided I wanted a mandolin, so I borrowed one, and I think that 'Everything and Nothing' was the first song I ever wrote for it. I was obsessed with the Pogues at the time, just going deeper and deeper into their records, and I decided I wanted some of that. I think we also realised it was us, not the instruments, making the sound. The thing that carries us through is Isaac's voice; as long as he's there delivering it the way he does, it's us.

"I spent my whole twenties trying to work out who I was, putting different masks on and trying different outfits on, but now I feel really good about who I am and who we are as a band. Even stuff like loving Sum 41 or Limp Bizkit, bands I used to avoid mentioning because there was a stigma there; I just don't care as much about that any more. I think it's really beautiful when you embrace every part of yourself and make something great with it. Just because I'm trying to rip off a nu-metal song doesn't mean it's going to come out sounding like System of a Down. I'm just letting those influences in a bit more."

"I definitely give less of a shit now," agrees Isaac. "Partly from doing therapy, but also just from feeling a lot more comfortable in my own skin anyway and not caring about looking or sounding a certain way for other people. We'll get people on social media commenting on things saying, 'Oh this isn't very punk of you!' but who the fuck said we wanted to be punk?"

"I fucking hate that word," says Laurie. "'Punk' is such a chain around the neck of any band. What something is or isn't is just complete bullshit. We're a band independent of labels; we're just us." ■