Soft Play at Reading 2025: duo reveal new album and hail Kneecap for inspiring them to speak about Palestine

Soft Play have spoken out against the UK Government for being “complicit” in a “genocide” against the Palestinian people, the BBC for “not sharing a proper view” of said conflict and Spotify founder Daniel Ek’s for investing in “AI drone weaponry”, while speaking to NME backstage at Reading 2025. Watch our video interview with the band above.

They also hailed Kneecap for inspiring them to speak out, exclusively revealed that they have written a new album and reflected on an amusing encounter with Robbie Williams and Danny Dyer.

Guitarist Laurie Vincent and drummer/vocalist Isaac Holman were speaking backstage at Reading Festival, where they’d played a blistering set on the Chevron stage during which they brought out Kate Nash, led a “free Palestine” chant and slammed gender-critical author J.K. Rowling.

Addressing their outspoken stances, guitar Laurie Vincent told NME: “I just think all music and all festival platforms at the moment, when there’s such an insidious, divisive thing happening before our eyes, we should all be saying something. Whether it’s macro or micro, there should be discussions in our homes.”

He added: “This is proof that there is still hope, that we can turn away from our screens and start facing towards real communities and real people and having connection again, because that’s what the powers that be want – they want us divided.”

Asked for his thoughts on the Mary Wallopers’ Victorious Festival set having been cut short after they led “Free Palestine” chants, he replied: “It’s more chilling watching our taxpayer money being used to arrest an elderly woman [a Palestine Action protestor in Bristol] for peacefully protesting a genocide that our Government are complicit in. The BBC are not sharing a proper view of it. They’re commissioning documentaries like Gaza: Doctors Under Attack, which is now being shown on Channel 4, and they’re not showing it.

“It’s happening before our eyes. You can support Israel openly and not get arrested but if you wanna protest for women and children to stop being bombed, you’re gonna get arrested.”

He continued: “I think there needs to be a total dismantling of all of the systems, all of the old money that still has its fingers across everything. There needs to be a dismantling of the music industry. The guy that owns Spotify [Ek] is investing in AI drone weaponry. It’s just all fucking bullshit, and I’m bored of it. I think everyone is.”

Vincent explained that Soft Play’s recent US shows with Kneecap proved a catalyst in their current outspokenness: “We took too long to come to the forefront, but then going on tour with Kneecap in the US and watching three of the most eloquent people I’ve ever met talk about it onstage fearlessly and educate us, and show that standing up for people that don’t have a voice is so purposeful… The media makes you believe we’re gonna lose everything if we do it, as well, when the reality is the people in the crowd are there with you.

“The majority is not what we’re being fed on the news. The majority doesn’t want war; we don’t want people to be killed. We wanna work towards a better world. The one per cent benefit [because] the more divided we are, the more they can invest people’s money back into paying people to develop weapons. We shouldn’t even be talking about this in this day and age! But it is the way that it is, and at the end of the day, I’ve got kids and I’m watching the images of the starving children. It’s so upsetting on a daily basis. How can’t these artists be saying something?”

He hailed other bands for helping to create an environment in which they could speak out together: “It’s strength in numbers as well, and its turning round and seeing [it], no matter what form its taking, whether it’s Brian Eno leading his charge with his cooperative of musicians or it’s Fontaines D.C. getting onstage and putting their signs up, or if it’s The Murder Capital or Kneecap or Bob Vylan – all these people, like Lambrini Girls.”

He also asked: “But where are the pop stars? Where are the people with the absolutely huge platforms? I think the hardest bit about it is the people that have more to lose are the ones that [aren’t] actually saying something.”

The band are currently touring ‘Heavy Jelly’, their fourth and most commercially successful album yet, peaking at Number Three on the UK album chart. “It feels amazing to be able to say we’ve had top 10 albums is something I didn’t think we’d ever do,” said Vincent.

Holman added: “We’re ready to get in and start making shit again. That’s done. It’s got its place in our heart, but we don’t really care about it anymore. We just wanna get on to the next thing.”

“’Heavy Jelly’ is like a manifesto of who we are and who we want to be,” Vincent explained. “It was: ‘No-one’s asking us to come back; we’re deciding to do it.’ So we had the freedom of being a sort of new band, making music for ourselves again and then realising it really connected.”

On previous albums, he said, “I think our ideas got lost between labels and ambition and ego, and it felt like we went too far towards trying to make something for our audience. We forgot that we were making it for ourselves, so ‘Heavy Jelly’ has just proved to us that people want us to be heavy and silly and that’s what we do, and so we’re gonna do even more of it.”

‘Heavy Jelly’ was the band’s first under the Soft Play, which they announced in 2022, ditching their original name, Slaves, due to its unwanted connotations.

Asked if fans still comment on the ‘new’ name, Vincent said: “You get people going, ‘Oh, I loved your old name I wish you’d never changed it. Did people really have a problem?’ Everyone’s really fascinated by it. But ultimately I think we feel the best we’ve ever felt, and like this name was always the name we were meant to have. It took us a long time to get round the idea of changing it but it’s done and it feels liberating. I feel like we’re free now.”

Holman also exclusively revealed of the follow-up to ‘Heavy Jelly’: “We’ve written quite a lot of it and we’re gonna go in soon and start putting it down.”

“It sounds heavy,” explained Vincent. “It’s just gonna even heavier, more raw, more Isaac spitting bars, more shredding… I wanna push the enveloped even further. I think we’ve found out that our ideas, the ones that are pushing in a new direction, are the ones people are responding to. So it’s calcified our vision and we’ve hit a vein of gold that we’re just gonna keep mining.”

Asked if the “liberating” effect of the name change fed into ‘Heavy Jelly’, Vincent said: “I think things like that are [part of a] huge cocktail of different stuff happening. That’s one of the things. It was the moment, the energy, all of it fed into why ‘Heavy Jelly’ worked so much. But when you become authentic and you strike into that feeling of confidence and assurance in your decisions, it just becomes so good because people feel that what you’re saying and doing is real, and we’d lost sight of that and now we are there.”

Robbie Williams featured on ‘Punk’s Dead’, the frenetic lead single from ‘Heavy Jelly’. Vincent praised the pop star and his upcoming 13th studio album, ‘Britpop’: “He’s another person that’s being so authentically himself, and he’s making some amazing music.”

Soft Play supported Williams at London’s British Summer Time Festival last year, a show that they had fond memories of.

“Danny Dyer was there,” Holman recalled. “Him and Danny dyer were watching the footie. Robbie was getting a facial and some sort of hair treatment whilst having a really deep chat with us. It was cool.”

Check back at NME here for the latest news, reviews, photos, interviews and more from Reading & Leeds 2025.

The post Soft Play at Reading 2025: duo reveal new album and hail Kneecap for inspiring them to speak about Palestine appeared first on NME.