More Shit About Soft Play

You know I love Soft Play. I’ve mentioned it before. I’ve waxed, opined, fanboy squeed…a lot.

Heavy Jelly remains my most played album of the last twelve months and most of my time seems to be underlined and soundtracked by Soft Play. I seriously love them in a way my 14 year old music obsessive self would have thought was a bit much. 

So ‘Heavier Jelly’ is a reissue of last years ‘Heavy Jelly’ with a bunch of extra tracks should have been the best thing ever, right?

I have reservations.

Not in the quality of the extra tracks, as each one is a blinder.  My problem is that they are so tonally different from the original album that it is quite jarring. I listen on vinyl, which may have a bearing on my view, but Heavy Jelly seemed to be perfect. Two sides. 11 tracks, 29 mins of brilliance. Boom.

Heavier Jelly is a sort Take That ‘Progressed/Progressed deal’ (Hey, a Robbie reference! He shows up on the ‘Punk’s Dead’ single as you probably know.) It plays with the previous format by bunching up a bit of side two on to side one and tacking the extra tracks on the end. This means that the perfect, heart-rending climax of Everything and Nothing is now lost. 

Back in my music industry days, you learned that track sequencing can make or break an album (and the spaces between tracks would cause endless arguments). They got it 100% right with Heavy Jelly. Heavier Jelly, though… I dunno… it seems really unbalanced.

The thing is, as I said, the extras are terrific and show an evolution, a maturing and a willingness to expand their sound. The track with Kate Nash is an absolute belter (and I‘m wearing my ‘Slushy’ Tee Shirt as I type this). Chairman of the Council is hilarious and wonderful, Heavy Jelly itself is startling, unexpected and brilliant.

But I think these six tracks would have been better served as a separate EP, keeping the original album uncluttered. 

When I listen on my MP3 Player, I can separate them out as individual playlists and for me that works wonderfully well. 

Fact is, Heavy Jelly still exists as my preferred 11 Track Album and I’ll be sticking with that. I’ll listen to Heavier Jelly via Amazon Music. I’m not going to slag the content of the new version off, as each and every track is worth the price of admission. 

It’s just that the format is a bit iffy.

Format aside, still a 10/10.