Soft Play this morning – determined to drag you out of bed and get you on the last stretch before Friday. Soft Play delivers a high voltage jolt everybody needs right about now.
If there was ever a time for Punk to resurface as an echo of the times it’s now. Great excuse to pound the walls and kick things. Not that I’m advocating violence or anything, but a scream is therapeutic (honest!).
Soft Play are a punk rock duo formed by Isaac Holman (lead vocals, drums) and Laurie Vincent (backing vocals, guitar, bass) in Royal Tunbridge Wells in 2012. They were known as Slaves until 2022, when they changed their name due to their original name’s unwanted connotations.
The band was formed as a duo after Holman and Vincent failed to recruit other musicians to join their punk band, and began sharing songwriting duties. Vincent later stated that this was an unexpected benefit as they could tour easily and cheaply in a small van due to only needing two people’s worth of equipment.
The duo released their debut album Are You Satisfied? on 1 June 2015. It reached No. 8 in its first week on the UK Albums Chart. The album was nominated for the 2015 Mercury Music Prize and has since gone Silver in the UK. They released their second album Take Control on 30 September 2016. Beastie Boys member Mike D produced the album, and was featured on the track “Consume or Be Consumed”. The album fared better in the charts than the first, climbing to No. 6 in its first week on the UK Albums Chart. They released their third album Acts of Fear and Love on 17 August 2018, which reached number 8 on the UK album charts.[14] In July 2019, the band released a four-track EP titled The Velvet Ditch and played a headline set at Truck Festival.
In December 2022, they changed their name to Soft Play. They explained, “The name ‘Slaves’ is an issue that doesn’t represent who we are as people or what our music stands for any longer.” Their fourth studio album (and first under their new name) Heavy Jelly was released on 19 July 2024.
Okay – now you know – crank this up and engage in some righteous indignation.
