Slaves Go Soft - How Not To Change Your Band Name

 Slaves Go Soft - How Not To Change Your Band Name

Since 2012, the duo of Laurie Vincent and Isaac Holman, formerly known as Slaves, had established themselves as one of the most fun, riotous, but also most experimental, nuanced, and commercially successful punk acts of the modern age. First there was ‘Sugar Coated Bitter Truth’ in 2012, a rough, exuberant, angry EP that was also a ton of fun and acted as a fantastic introduction to the duo. 2015’s ‘Are You Satisfied?’ built on this with more fleshed out songwriting and catchier choruses, but still without sacrificing that initial rebellious appeal. Then in 2016 we got the “mixtape” ‘Take Control’, produced by the Beastie Boys’ Mike D, which saw them bring in more influences from hip-hop, post-punk and industrial, making it their most boldly experimental release. ‘Acts of Fear and Love’ followed in 2018, expanding more on the straight-up rock sounds of ‘Are You Satisfied?’, with much more variety in its sound palette, its lyrics acting as philosophical musings on the modern day. Their most recent release, 2019’s EP ‘The Velvet Ditch’ seemed a much more understated affair, half punk ragers, half introspective ballads, but still very enjoyable. However, following the tragic passing of guitarist Laurie’s girlfriend Emma from cancer in 2020, the band was left on an indefinite hiatus. However, recently the band returned to social media, confirming new material was on the way. Exciting news indeed. But there’s one crucial detail I’m missing, that being that the duo have in fact changed their name. So, what have they changed it to you ask? Well, forget Slaves and instead welcome… Soft Play? Right then.

But then the question is: why the change? And that very neatly brings us to the keyword at the heart of the issue: offense. As the band elaborated in their statement, “As younger men, we responded to criticism of the name from a place of fear and defensiveness [...] the name Slaves is an issue. In this day and age we believe it is very important that people change and make improvements no matter how far down the line they are”, which I suppose makes sense, but saying that, so did their defense 7 years ago. Now I personally never saw anybody really offended by the name, the most you’d get is the odd “ooh, isn’t the name ‘Slaves’ a bit dodgy?” The impetus of this outrage according to the BBC, along with an 8-year old tweet from singer-songwriter Samantha Urbani, is a Fader article titled ‘Why Would A Band Of White Dudes Name Themselves Slaves?’ Now while we all may have a mental image in our head we think of the word “slave”, the definition is far broader in scope, meaning “a person who is forced to work for and obey another and is considered to be their property”, something which the group themselves cleverly ceased upon, saying in a statement at the time, “our name and music is aimed at being a slave to day-to-day life and routine. It is a metaphorical use of the word.” Well put I think. Although conveniently that explanation is now absent from Wikipedia, can’t think why. But if the name Slaves was so offensive it had to change, why not pick a name with the same central idea like The Prisoners? I understand they’ve expressed they’re not the same people they were 8 years ago, which is fair enough, but choosing that name in particular is a real head scratcher.

But back to the crux of the issue once again: offense. While they of course had their reasons for the change, as these things tend to, it became a discussion instead about the concept of offense itself. Without getting too deep into my own opinion, and at the risk of going on a tangent, I never like online discourse surrounding offense, because I feel it loses nuance and becomes immature very quickly on both sides. Primarily though I don’t like it because it gives angry people ammunition. Let me explain. So people pointing out the argument of “a punk band changing their name because it offends people isn’t very punk” are absolutely right, as are many related arguments, because I agree, and I feel like there’s probably a worthwhile discussion to be had there about the nature of offense and punk culture. The problem is though, all possible nuance is sucked out of it when some angry middle aged man on Twitter with Union Flag in his display name comes on and says “punk band changes name cos it’s offensive, bloody woke mob out in full force again, Orwell was right.” Not only is this irritating because the word “woke” makes my skin crawl, but also because it takes focus away from the central issue, and instead turns it into an argument about political correctness and censorship, topics which very few people seem to be able to discuss adequately. God forbid something like GB News gets hold of it, because then you get an article like “Woke band Slaves change their NAME in case it 'offends' anyone”, where they’re then able to dangle the woke, PC bogeyman in front of their readers noses, and leave them continually fuming in their living rooms. But again, like with my last example, it annoys me because it takes away from the issue at hand, one that many commentators thankfully addressed: I don’t really care why they changed it, but Soft Play is a really crap band name.

Like of all the names you could have possibly gone for, you chose the least threatening and vaguely dodgy sounding name possibly conceivable? I just don’t get it. Granted, I’m not quite as fixated on that last point as some others sarcastically quipping “oh you changed Slaves cos it’s offensive, but I find Soft Play offensive cos you sound like pedos”, but it is worth bringing up. It’s like The Sex Pistols reforming as The Cuddly Bunnies or something, it’s just silly and weird. Like again, if you want to go with the “slave to the day-to-day” angle why not go with a name like The Androids or Machine Malfunction or something? And even if you want to make the point that you’re less angry, surely there’s something better out there, like maybe The Jaded Few? I understand my suggestions aren’t fantastic, but when you’re going against Soft Play it makes any band name appear on the level of King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard. Ultimately I think that the name change was unnecessary and ultimately slightly pointless, and honestly, it’s been received that negatively that I wouldn’t be surprised if they changed it within a week, because as somebody pointed out, no-one with a working brain would wear a Soft Play T-shirt in public. But as long as the music is good it’s ultimately not a big deal. Although with a name change like that, you can’t be sure if they’ll next turn up bragging about their new flute led family folk album. We can only hope.