SOFT PLAY - "HEAVY JELLY" (2024)

SOFT PLAY used to go by the name Slaves and have taken some significant time off as a band due to due some significant life events happening to both members of the group (Isaac Holman - drums and vocals, Laurie Vincent - guitar). Their last appearance was on Gorillaz' Momentary Bliss track way back in January 2020, and the last release of their own was in 2019, and was just essentially a leftovers EP from their last full record in 2018. So it has been a while! Understandably so, considering Laurie lost his wife to cancer in 2020 and Isaac has alluded to having a mental breakdown and has been struggling with OCD, alongside the duo experiencing the loss of a few other significant people in their lives during this time.

Now the band are back with a new name as they were fed up of having to continually justify their previous name choice to a pretty valid criticism that they themselves actually agreed with. The name change is the core conceit of their comeback single (and lead single for HEAVY JELLY), Punk's Dead. The track is essentially a pre-emptive piss take of fans angry about the apparent 'wokeness' of the name change. The song is super heavy, with gnarly garage punk riffs, and also super funny, with some killer lines and a feature from Robbie Williams on the bridge. 

I think Punk's Dead epitomises the change in sound on HEAVY JELLY, it's heavier and also funnier than the group's previous output. Not that the band were ever serious, but on their records in the past, the humour was much more observational and targeted at others (think Girl Fight and Rich Man). Whereas on HJ, the band lean more into absurdism or writing from a first person perspective - making the jokes feel less cynically targeted at individuals and more of a wink and a nod just to bring a smile to peoples faces. On the sound side of things, the sound is much heavier, with super heavy, fuzzed out riffs that border on metal in places. Similarly, Isaac's shouty vocals are so much more intense and also border on a metallic scream - particularly on the opener All Things.

As the record is just a straight up 30 mins of blistering punk rock, I don't feel the need to going in depth into every track here, but here are a few highlights. The story of someone knocking Isaac's shopping out is hand and his completely disproportionate reaction on Act Violently is hilarious, as is his outsized reaction to a leaky bin bag on Bin Juice Disaster. Worms On Tarmac is an absurdist tale of a worm that is lost in the human world of tarmac and concrete who is longing for mud and swamps. Isaac Is Typing... humourfully details Isaacs struggles with OCD against sludgy alt-metal riffs. Mirror Muscles and Working Title are more akin to older targeted piss takes, being about 'roided up gym freaks and people playing the Hollywood game. Both are worthy targets, and make great songs.

That leaves the closer, Everything and Nothing, which is a bit of an oddball in the tracklist, being a jangly mandolin led post-punk / indie rock tune and is the only one that is explicitly about the trauma the duo has been through over the past few years. It is an outpouring of grief that feels so earnest and beautiful. It really touches a nerve, being dedicated to a friend of Isaac who he lost, but with lyrics referencing the death of Laurie's wife and just general isolation and the longing for connection. 

I think that the fact that Everything and Nothing follows a record that up to this point has been silly, fun and irreverent only enhances its impact, and the profundity of the record as a whole. Instead of falling into it all and losing themselves, Isaac and Laurie reformed the band, made a bunch of fun songs that brought a smile to their faces, the faces of their fans, and reconnected with the world around them. And in doing that, the band have made their best album to date.

Top Tracks: All Things, Punk's Dead, Act Violently, Isaac Is Typing..., Bin Juice Disaster, Worms On Tarmac, Mirror Muscles, Working Title, Everything and Nothing

8/10

IDLES - "Ultra Mono"

Let's get on the IDLES hype train. I've been aware of IDLES for a couple of years, due to the critical acclaim their second record received, but didn't actually ever listen to them until Ultra Mono came out last month. So as a newcomer to the band, Ultra Mono has really impressed me as a really intense, ferocious punk album with thick, gritty instrumentation that incorporates ambitious post-punk and noise rock elements; and angry, politically disenfranchised sloganeering from frontman Joe Talbot.

The basis of every track here is the loud, pummelling drums and gnarled and grizzly bass riffs that just propel each song along with so much energy and aggression. Layered on top is the relentless lead guitars and Talbots sung / shouted vocals that sound somewhere between jaded sarcasm and complete fury. Despite the sheer intensity and volume of these songs, they're actually constructed in quite a delicate way to accentuate the bouncy grooves or the more post-punky elements such as the electronic and industrial parts of  the tracks Grounds and Reigns. Anxiety slowly gains tempo and becomes more chaotic and noisy as the track progresses, reflecting the themes within the song. The lyrics of the album are as equally relentless as the instrumentation, raging over one socio-political grievance after another. The aforementioned Anxiety addresses the complete lack of control over ones life someone can feel in current society and how it can feel overwhelming to simply exist sometimes. Reigns and Carcinogenic slam down on class inequality and War is aggressively anti-war. Joe essentially declares war on war with the opening line, "THIS MEANS WAR".

Some of the tracks take themselves slightly less seriously, and are probably the most straightforward punk on the album. However they don't feel as consistently impactful as the more aggressive and serious songs. Model Village is excellent, and something I can relate to well, growing up in a village filled with stuck up gammons like the ones described in the song. The surf-rock guitar solo is also a load of fun too. Mr. Motivator and Ne Touche Pas Moi aren't quite as impactful though. Mr. Motivator takes the piss out of the idea that you have to always be motivated and productive, and is a fun song, but lacks depth of some of the other tracks on the album. Ne Touche Pas Moi is a track about toxic masculinity and how women are often treated in public from the perspective of a women. You can tell from the performances that the band are leaning into the irony that they're a bunch of middle-class white guys singing the song from the perspective of a marginalised person, and Jenny Beth from Savages does provide backing vocals; but something about the song that just feels a little off. It's like the message of the song feels slightly forced, compared to some of the other statements on the record.

The only real slowdown on the record is the penultimate song, A Hymn. This track is a moody and atmospheric post-punk slow burn, which builds in intensity as Talbot repeatedly sings "I wanna be loved, everybody does". It's about as personal and emotional as the record goes, and does a great job functioning as a bridge between the political rage of the other tracks and genuine human emotion outside of that bubble. This leads into the loud and thunderous closer, Danke, which returns to the choppy and raw post-hardcore instrumentation, but sticks with the emotional themes of A Hymn, with Joe declaring "True love will find you in the end". Its a hopeful way to end a record that's for the most part very angry and discontent.

Ultra Mono is a brutal 40 minutes of ferocious but carefully constructed rage, and I think its great. I've heard that the record hasn't been met with quite the same level of praise that the band's first two albums were, so I'm really intrigued about how good those albums must be if Ultra Mono is considered a bit weaker.

Top Tracks: Grounds, Anxiety, Model Village, Carcinogenic, Reigns, The Lover, A Hymn

8/10

Green Day - "Father of All Motherfuckers" (2020)

Green Day have been rather directionless since American Idiot in 2004. Their records have flip-flopped between pale imitations of that album's style (21st Century Breakdown and Revolution Radio) and a more 'back to basics' form of pop-punk that called back to the group's 90s work (¡Uno!, ¡Dos!, and ¡Tré!), All of which have felt rather redundant in my opinion. This record does not follow in that tradition, instead taking a left turn into 60s garage punk revival territory, similar to what groups like The Hives, Jet and The Vines were doing in the early 2000s. 

And it just doesn't work. A lot of those groups have gotten stick for their sound over the years, due to it sounding stale and done to death, and it is still exactly the same for this new Green Day record. They don't do anything new with the sound at all, and it is so squeaky-cleanly produced that there is absolutely zero edge to it at all.

This is in contradiction to much of the lyrical content and also the bands promotion of the record, which is all about 'rocking out' and 'not giving a fuck' mentality. It makes everything here feel so fake and plasticy. Yeah let's rock out to this completely edgeless and toothless collection of songs. This is compounded by the cringe-inducing title and cover-art. The albums full title is Father of All Motherfuckers, but I only found this out when I went on its Wikipedia page, as wherever this album is available to stream or buy it will be listed as "Father of All..." with this awful censored cover. It's so transparently false that it's hard to believe a band as experienced as Green Day really believe what they were making was rebellious and 'punk-rock'.

The best tracks here are tolerable, if completely forgettable. The title track serves well enough as music for a car ad. The surf rock vibe of Stab You in the Heart has more energy than a lot of the tracks, as does Take the Money and crawl (which is also the punchiest). However the hooks are not memorable in the slightest, and slip my brain as soon as the tracks are over. The worst moments do start to grate after a few listens. Fire, Ready, Aim is beyond formulaic, and features awful whooping background vocals. I Was a Teenage Teenager is about as awkward as the title suggests. It sounds like a bad imitation of Weezer, with lyrics trying to convey teenage angst. However, Green Day are nearly 50 now, and the terrible hook of "I was a teenage teenager" really does not convey any genuine sense of relatability. Junkies on a High sounds like if Green Day made an Imagine Dragons song (although to it's better than most Imagine Dragons songs), complete with all the stale and played out 2010s pop rock tropes (supposedly 'epic' bass drop as the chorus hits, tacky pitch-shifted backing vocals, ect.).

This album is perfectly tolerable, but there is absolutely nothing inspired or unique about it. It is a crop of shiny pop rock tunes for beer commercials and sporting arenas. The band's awkward lack of self-awareness about how they are promoting it and what it supposedly represents also does it no favours. It's not even 'so bad it's good', since there is nothing interesting about this record.

3/10