Fans from all over Chicago and further came to the Bottom Lounge on Tuesday, April 22, to see Soft Play live.
The group Soft Play is a punk rock band from the U.K. composed of lead singer and drummer Isaac Holman and guitarist Laurie Vincent. Previously the band had been called Slaves but changed the name after acknowledging the bad denotation and baggage behind the name.
Soft Play performed at the Bottom Lounge for their first North American tour since rebranding as a group. The tour focused heavily on music from their newest album, “Heavy Jelly,” while still playing some songs from various other albums.
The song “Punk’s Dead” focuses a lot on the name change from the group and their overall decision to rebrand despite comments saying they were ‘PC babies’ due to changing their name, which is said in the chorus of the song.
Twenty-one-year-old long time fan, Rat King Crow, has been listening to Soft Play since they were in high school and was able to see them live for the first time at the Bottom Lounge. Crow thinks punk is overall an important genre for expressing individualism and agrees with Soft Play’s sentiment on changing their name.
“At first I just saw the name change, I was like ‘oh’,” Crow said. “Then the new album came out and I heard ‘Punk’s Dead’ and I was like that’s funny as f—, but I actually love it now. It makes sense why they changed it.”
Other concert goers expressed the importance of punk music in today’s world, like 28-year-old Ian Frankland. Frankland believes a sense of community and safety is one of the main draws of punk culture.
“It’s a counter culture movement by design,” Frankland said. “You’ve got all these marginalized groups that come together to express themselves, be angry, be energetic, you know, to get the negative feelings out and to have positive feelings through it.”
Concerts in general are inspiring to Frankland, with the appeal of being able to buy $20 tickets and see bands he previously had not known about.
“You could see something that could change your life,” Frankland said. “You can connect with people in a way that you just can’t outside of art, and you could do it all on the cheap on weekday nights.”
Since Soft Play had limited locations on their tour this time around, some concert goers traveled from other states in order to see them live. Michelle Trees drove from the Quad Cities, Iowa, to see them play.
“I have liked post punk Brit bands ever since the Arctic Monkeys,” Trees said. “It’s kind of morphed into The Idols and Soft Play and a whole host of newer genre punk bands out of England.”
Trees has a deep connection with the song “Everything and Nothing” reminding her of a former friend of hers.
“I had a friend recently pass away and I heard the song and saw bird murmuration (like) in the lyrics,” Trees said. “I found out she passed away not that long after, it just reminds me of her.”
Similarly, Crow, Frankland and Trees all think punk is defined differently depending on the person and that is part of the appeal to the genre.
“You can always identify with punk music, it’s just individualism,” Crow said. “I didn’t grow up with a lot of money so a lot of the s— that I do have and that I did get, I would have to make myself so punk music, I just clung to it really hard because of that.”
Soft Play’s next show in North America will be with Riot Fest from Sept. 19 to 21, 2025.
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