Soft Play capped off a triumphant 2024 as they wrapped up their UK tour with a dazzling Halloween show at London’s Brixton Academy last week. The duo, formerly known as Slaves, have nothing in the diary now until the new year but there’s a lot to look back and reflect on in the meantime, their name change and debut album as Soft Play - Heavy Jelly came out earlier this year - bringing some of their biggest success yet.
Speaking to this writer around the release of Heavy Jelly, guitarist Laurie Vincent said they came into Soft Play determined to do things their way having learned lessons the hard way in their previous incarnation. “I don’t know if this was just in my head back then, but it felt like we were being told, ‘If you go down this route, you’re going to be an indie band’ and ‘If you go down this route, you’re going to be a rock band’, and you have to pick your lane. It was never given to us, ‘Just do it all’, there was this fear that if you did this thing, you won’t get that thing. It was the same with publications. ‘If you give this person an exclusive, they won’t give you one’ or ‘If you go to this radio station first...’ This time, it’s just been like, ‘Fuck it’.”
