Album Review: SOFT PLAY - ‘Heavy Jelly’
As the band Slaves, Isaac Holman and Laurie Vincent were single-handedly responsible for bringing British punk back into the mainstream. Not since the 80s had such raucous, shouty riffage troubled the Top 10, and it’s clear to see their influence on the UK rock scene in the years since their brash and brilliant debut album ‘Are You Satisfied?’ was released in 2015. IDLES, Nova Twins, Bob Vylan and Kid Kapichi are just some of the abrasive bands to achieve serious commercial success in their wake, illustrating their considerable impact on alternative culture. They may have started with no expectations, but Isaac and Laurie ended up changing the musical landscape of the 2010’s, igniting a burst of raw energy and DIY attitude to challenge the punk explosion of ’77. Now, after a six-year hiatus brought on by bereavement, mental health issues and a breakdown of relations, the pair are back, rebranded as SOFT PLAY.
As oxymoronic band names go, SOFT PLAY has got to be up there as one of the best. Rather than adopt the mellower sound which the name suggests, the Kent duo have taken the cheeky, tongue-in-cheek musings of their early work, and made them a million times heavier. Whereas before they felt like a modern version of the Sex Pistols, they now operate in a surreal space somewhere between Ian Dury and Korn. “Our band walks this tightrope of ridiculousness and deadly seriousness and now the name is the cherry on top”, notes Laurie, accurately summing up both the band’s distinctive style, and their new album ‘Heavy Jelly’.
Recorded over a year between The Tunbridge Wells Forum, Laurie’s garden studio, and The Libertines’ studio The Albion Rooms in Margate, the resulting record is visceral, absurd, and sincere in equal measure. Less of a return to form than a daring fresh start, ‘Heavy Jelly’ is not concerned with recycling old tricks, and happily swaps out the band’s punkier past for a more metal-based approach. Nowhere is this more apparent than on the cut-throat thrash of ‘Act Violently’, which all but samples System of a Down’s ‘Chop Suey!’ in its breakneck verses. ‘Mirror Muscles’, meanwhile, fuses nu-metal instrumentation with satiric observation as it casts its gaze round an ego-filled gym: “Clear the watering hole, here comes the boffola bison/ Mike Tyson meets Rylan, teeth whitened and I’m violent”, sneers Holman with the gritty hip-hop phrasing which has long been his trademark. Opener ‘All Things’ subverts expectations by beginning with an angelic choir, before dropping into a bouncy, fuzzy riff as Holman declares: “I’m the nicest dickhead you’ve ever met”. It’s a fitting start to an album which is largely interested in exploring the contradictory components of the band, investigating the gulf between their aggressive on-stage personas and their affable, really quite wholesome personalities.
Not that they’re here to please everyone. Comeback single ‘Punk’s Dead’ takes no prisoners in its hilariously brutal rebuttal of those upset by their name change, taking whiny online comments and transplanting them over one of Laurie’s finest ever riffs. The result? A headbanging blast of an instant classic, stuffed to the brim with witty lyrics you can’t help but smile and sing along to (“Johnny Rotten is turning in his bed/ I was gonna say grave but the fucker ain’t dead” being a particular highlight). Such is the strength of the song that the band’s largely punkish audience didn’t bat an eyelid at the inclusion of Robbie Williams, who sings the bridge with his unique brand of insincere conviction, and overnight the track had managed to turn at least half of those who originally took issue with the name change into the biggest SOFT PLAY cheerleaders around. The new gold standard for comeback singles, ‘Punk’s Dead’ is not just the best song on ‘Heavy Jelly’, but one of the band’s all-time classics.
That’s not to say other tracks don’t come close, though. ‘Isaac Is Typing…’ swaggers into life with a swinging groove, before the chorus transforms the song into a deadly hardcore pit-starter, not too far off from something you might find in a Stray From The Path song. Lyrically, the song explores Isaac’s struggles living with OCD, the sheer heaviness of the song smartly contrasted with the vulnerability of the lyrics (“I wish it was simple, but it just isn’t so/ When scratching the itch, is all that I know”). The gleeful romp of ‘Worms on Tarmac’ is another highlight, Isaac rapping from the perspective of a worm (yes, you read that right) for the majority of the song. “I should be wriggling, giggling, chewing, nibbling / But now I’m stuck in the sun and I’m sizzling”, he spits at a pace so rapid it puts Eminem’s latest efforts to shame. While obviously very funny, the song is also thought-provoking in its spotlighting of a tiny creature not well-suited to the man-made world we’ve created. An animal lover, Holman clearly feels for the helpless invertebrates forced to survive in less-than-ideal conditions, though he still ensures the humour flows throughout, peaking with the laugh out loud exclamation: “Shit, here comes a dog! / I think he’s seen me, oh my god!”.
‘Bin Juice Disaster’ mines a similarly mundane (though perhaps tad more relatable) situation for laughs, while ‘The Mushroom and The Swan’ begins as a full-throttle, Nirvana-nodding race through Holman’s therapy sessions, before taking a psychedelic left-turn, with what sounds like Zurg from Toy Story 2 inhabiting the psychiatrist, proceeding to deliver abstract ruminations on- you guessed it - mushrooms and swans. Experimenting outside the realms of heaviness feels more natural on ‘Working Title’, a beat-driven reflection on drug culture which excels in its almost electronic production and painfully authentic lyrics (“What a tale to tell the grandkids/ Jaw swinging, looking minging, on your own").
Far less serious is the snappy sucker-punch of ‘John Wick’, which packs a lot into its one and a half minutes. Written from the perspective of Keanu Reeves’ titular hitman, naturally, it sees Holman channel his inner Jesse Pinkman as he screams “I’m John Wick BITCHHH!” over crashing drums and distorted guitar. Sure to be a gig highlight, it’s a song almost certain to join ‘Girl Fight’ and ‘Fuck the Hi-Hat’ in SOFT PLAY live lore as a track given a witty extended intro, building up anticipation to unprecedented levels before a brief but mental mosh pit.
Though ‘Heavy Jelly’ marks a significant change in direction for SOFT PLAY, none of the songs push the band forward quite as much as closer ‘Everything and Nothing’. A unique mix of harsh, unforgiving vocals, pretty, REM-style mandolin, and honest, heart-wrenching lyrics, ‘Everything and Nothing’ is proof that SOFT PLAY are in a different league to most bands considered ‘punk’. With Laurie having tragically lost his partner Emma – the mother of his first two children- to cancer in 2019, and Isaac’s best friend Bailey passing away shortly after, this is a song they needed to write. Although they are hardly a go-to band for ballads, here SOFT PLAY express their collective grief in a truly stunning song which will resonate with many. “White knuckles on the counter in the kitchen, they don’t know how hard I’m kicking/ To keep my head above”, shouts Isaac, his voice strained with emotion.
Having both taken time to rebuild their lives and eventually re-find love, ‘Everything and Nothing’- and thus ‘Heavy Jelly’ as a whole- ends with a glimmer of hope. “Setting sun and a starling murmuration, amongst the devastation/ I feel love”, Holman concludes, before ethereal violin leads the song to a peaceful close. At once painful and beautiful, it’s unlike anything else in the band’s catalogue, much like the record itself. As we learnt on ‘Punk’s Dead’, not everyone is a fan of change, but if you can open yourself up to a new incarnation of Britain’s most lovable punks, you’ll be thoroughly rewarded.
Words by Ben Left
