Soft Play’s Laurie Vincent: “I used to be really interested in doing solos, but it didn’t give me much joy”
“My main focus as a guitar player is writing something as strong as a melody,” Soft Play’s Laurie Vincent explains. Chatting to Guitar.com on an August evening from a leopard print-covered couch, the sun casts a golden stripe across his face. “Things that really inspire me are the Love Will Tear Us Apart bassline by Joy Division, or Seven Nation Army by The White Stripes.”
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Despite having just run around in Dad Mode settling his three children down for the night, he’s laid back and effortlessly cool, and talks about his music with a matter of fact confidence: This is what I’m good at, this is the kind of guitarist I don’t wanna be, this is what we do best – this is how Soft Play operate. Alongside vocalist and percussionist Isaac Holman, the duo know their artistic identity inside out, and that’s why they’re only going up.
Vincent’s approach to guitar echoes just this sentiment. He builds songs around crafty earworm riffs, opting for impact and memorability as opposed to excessive speedy runs that would impress far more fleetingly. “When the guitar part becomes the thing that someone sings along to, I feel like you’ve then superseded the guitar player. You’ve made something that’s more important than just a riff,” he explains.
“I used to be really interested in being technical and doing solos, but it didn’t give me much joy. I find a lot more joy in finding something that makes me excited to play and that’s really recognisable. I think you want something to just smack people in the face and you want it to repeat in their head and get stuck, and it’s ultimately what I’m the best at doing.”
Soft Play’s Laurie Vincent (left) and Isaac Hayes (right). Image: Jude Harrison
Comic Timing
Too right. You’ll find this tactic across Soft Play’s discography, dating right back to hits that put them on the map such as The Hunter from their 2015 album Are You Satisfied? and of course on their new record Heavy Jelly, with belters such as Mirror Muscles, Act Violently – which hilariously explores the annoyance of E-scooters taking over UK cities and being driven erratically on the pavements – and the comedic Bin Juice Disaster, all created on a spine of such technique.
The record debuted at number three on the UK album charts, nestling them just beneath Eminem and Olivia Rodrigo, marking their highest charting album this far. It’s a big deal. Prior to this release, the pair took some time off. They worked on other projects apart, they hadn’t been getting along due to external pressures and inner self-doubt, and both went through some incredibly difficult personal losses. The pause was needed to save their friendship, they both agreed, and along with some therapy it worked. With a new band name (their formal moniker of Slaves was “intended solely as a reference to the grind of day to day life”, but due to its negative connotations, they changed it in 2022), they conjured up an album that’s satirical, sassy and a brilliantly fun listen.
“We took charge of everything creatively, all the ideas for the singles and all the writing. We had someone who directed the artwork side of things, but we were really involved with every single creative decision,” he says. “I feel really vindicated that we know what’s good for our band. In turn, what we’ve made has been so well received.”
Click Track
Given their time away, you may think it would have taken a while for Vincent and Holman to get back into the swing of making music together, but it turns out they have a synergy that never burns out. For this record, most of the tracks didn’t quite click unless they were in the same room. “I noticed on this album that a lot of the stuff I was writing separately maybe didn’t always fly,” Vincent explains.
“When we were in the room together, I’d come up with something that he immediately liked. I’ve written all the riffs in the studio with him present, and I think that was quite a new thing. It made me feel like the energy that we create when we’re together is supercharged, and there’s some sort of vibration that we both tune into that knows what our band is about.”
Though mostly self-taught, Vincent managed to crack the guitar thanks to a teacher he had called Chris. Today, they’re still in touch. “He’s just put me on to one of his current students who is like our biggest fan, so that’s quite cool. He sat with me for five minutes and I could play [Oasis’] Wonderwall by the end of that five minutes, whereas every other lesson I’d had, it was much more like, ‘this is a note’ or ‘this is tablature’ and my brain couldn’t take it in. He cut all of that out and was like, ‘we can go back to that later. Just put your fingers here and play.’”
Today, Vincent says he still dances around a fretboard to find the sounds he’s hearing in his head. He navigates our instrument through ear and intuition. “One of my favourite inspirations is Greg Ginn in Black Flag, he just plays tonnes of wrong notes but the way he plays his guitar is so aggressive and so visceral.” He adds, “I quite like the fact that people are saying ‘I’ve learned to play guitar through your band because it’s easy enough to learn.’ I think there’s a real magic in that.”
Soft Play with a Jackson guitar. Image: Jude Harrison
On The Gear
Vincent’s rig is easy enough to recreate too, with most songs relying on just four main ingredients – fuzz, distortion, an octave and a chorus pedal. He’s particularly fond of his Woodcutter – a distortion by boutique brand Big Ear – but aside from that, there’s not much fuss involved. He mostly starts all songs on acoustic guitar, and doesn’t faff with a crowded pedalboard.
“On this album, I have just followed intuitively what feels good in my gut. I basically cared less about what [specific music] scenes want from people,” he shares. “Ultimately, I’ve landed on using a Jackson. They offered me a V [a Pro Series Rhoads RRT-5], then they said I could keep it… It stayed in tune really well and it looked aggressive, and I was like, ‘wow, I thought I kind of had to play a Fender because that was what indie or punk bands did.’ It just looks like the kind of guitar I wanted when I was a kid.”
As for the tone on Heavy Jelly, Vincent says that a lot of its songs are “just a distortion into an amp”:
“On Act Violently, we literally plugged the guitar into a preamp. I had a tuner, guitar preamp, and [went] straight in, it was just fuzzed out. That was it. I love that guitar tone.”
He adds, “It’s more like, ‘what can I get out of the gear?’ Rather than trying to use the gear to find stuff. I’m trying to make my life a bit more simple. I’ve always believed that the tone and expression of a guitarist is in their hands, and I can make any guitar sound like me. I think that’s the beauty of playing guitar.”
Speaking of beauty, there’s another instrument in line with guitar that makes for a rather poignant offering on Heavy Jelly – a mandolin. Vincent was listening to The Pogues and The Waterboys in the year running up to the studio, and in turn went on an impulsive quest for a mandolin. “Someone lent us one and I immediately wrote this song called Heavy Jelly, which hasn’t come out. But then I also wrote Everything and Nothing.”
Everything and Nothing is the closing track on the album, one that reflects on the band’s journey so far – the people they have loved and lost, the beauty and chaos of being alive. It’s an oxymoronic, bittersweet ballad that puts the soft in Soft Play. “It was like the first or second thing I ever worked out on a mandolin, and not being able to find any chord shapes is really fun because you play it in a completely different way. I’ve recently got a banjo and I’m going through the same thing,” Vincent adds.
Live Wires
Vincent’s going to have plenty of course to showcase his Jackson – and his mandolin – in a live environment. They’ve just played a huge set at BludFest, Yungblud’s new budget-friendly day festival, and have a UK headline stint lined up this October. The Heavy Jelly era is just getting started.
“I feel like the time that we had away has highlighted that there’s a real gap for a band like us to exist,” he states. “I feel so good about this album and the way that people are receiving it. It’s not uber political but it’s about coming together and having fun. I really think that this album could travel so far.”
So, what can listeners learn from a record that shouts about bin juice and reckless E-scooter drivers? A lot more than you might first think: “It’s authentic and it can inspire other people to be authentic. It’s not necessarily designed for people to love it, it’s designed for us to express ourselves in our purest form. I think when you see people doing that it’s infectious,” shares Vincent. “It feels like a mission statement in being yourself.”
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