I'm the nicest dickhead you've ever met

Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts

26/07/24 : Heavy Jelly - SOFT PLAY

This sounds like it could be a kid's album but I had a sneaking suspicion that wasn't going to be the case - and when I heard that Soft Play were previously known as Slaves, it was pretty much confirmed that I wasn't going to like this.

And I can most definitely confirm that I do not like this. I can totally accept that they're making the kind of sounds they want to make and I'm also happy that there's skill involved in making those sounds. But - well, it's just a bloody awful racket. Why would anyone want to listen to this? I'd like to be able to describe it in more detail, but "bloody awful racket" is gonna have to do for you - mostly because it is. It is pleasingly brief at 29:29 but even that is about 29 minutes too long for me.

We're at a frankly astonishing #3 with a new entry in the chart this week - I'm already looking forward to guessing where it ends up next week. The rest of the top five are Eminem (somewhat surprisingly holding on to the top spot), Olivia Rodrigo (up from #22 last week, so she's obviously done something), Taylor and Glass Animals (another new entry). 

Without even listening to it, I knew I'd prefer Glass Animals to Soft Play not least because I'd prefer bloody anything to Soft Play. And yeah, it's certainly preferable but maybe a little too much of more of the same from them. The other new entries are Deep Purple (#12) which I initially ignored because I assumed it was a best-of but it's all new whilst still sounding very much in the old vein, Los Campesinos! (#14) which is surprisingly similar to Glass Animals but with more guitars, Morrisson (#28) which is trap which I'm very much not into but it was more impressive than I expected, Childish Gambino (#33) which I didn't check out because I wouldn't get it and Jimin (#56) and Stray Kids (#62) who are just competing to see who can make the weirdest K-pop.

Last week I said that Eminem would do well and only drop to #8, so we can see I somewhat underestimated his ongoing popularity - very few people who aren't Taylor hold on to the top spot these days. I'm going to go for a first this week and say that Soft Play are going to drop out of the chart entirely - I just don't see why anyone would want to listen to this twice. And the Taylor stats for this week are one in the top ten, three in the top twenty, six in the top thirty and ten in the entire chart - her domination shows no signs of abating.

Wikipedia has a surprisingly large section on the critical reception that tells me it received "universal acclaim" whilst also reporting that The Guardian stated it was "an album full of very harsh, relatively atonal punk-metal – a mode that can get monotonous", which seems like a strange kind of acclaim to me. Everyone did agree there was a load of energy on display though and I'd struggle to argue with that - unsurprisingly it's done nothing away from these shores commercially. Amusingly it also tells me they changed their name from Slaves due to the "unwanted connotations" that came along with that name - if only they'd thought about that at the start, eh? Or maybe slavery was viewed as a good thing back in 2012?

"Customers also listened to" The Gallows, Frank Carter, Kid Kapachi and Baby Dave (who appears to be sitting naked in a bath full of gravy on the cover of his album). I don't know anything about any of them other than Frank but I can assure you that, based upon Soft Play's offering, I will not be attempting to find out about them.

19/07/24 - Less offensive, but less impressive
02/08/24 - A whole lotta fun