Soft Punch is the project of Washington D.C.-based musician Rye Thomas. On September 15, Soft Punch will release Above Water on Bad Friend Records (pre-order). Ahead of the album, Rye took the time to answer a few questions about the new record, an extended sense of isolation beyond the pandemic and what’s next.
Thank you so much for agreeing to this interview. Congrats on the new record “Above Water.” What should TGEFM readers know about Soft Punch and the upcoming album?
I’m lucky to be part of the DC music scene. While I was recording this album, I used a mixing board that once belonged to The Dismemberment Plan, I borrowed a Roland Space Echo from my friend Hugh McElroy (of Black Eyes), and I bought a vocal mic off Don Zientara, who ran the now-defunct Inner Ear Sound Studio. It’s very cool to get to engage with the ongoing legacy of DC punk.
That said, Soft Punch is a pretty eclectic pop project, not something you’d likely find on Dischord. Above Water is more akin to Revolver than Red Medicine. If you’ve got adventurous ears, there’s plenty of sound to explore when the album comes out on September 15, and the songs hold up too!
The world has been multiple versions of fucked up for the last few years, but your health left you homebound a decade ago. How did the loneliness and isolation play into the music you were writing, and conversely, how did your recovery and the simultaneous global pandemic and its subsequent quarantine affect your writing?
I was ahead of curve on quarantine–my health hit rock bottom in late 2017, and I’ve been mostly homebound ever since. For a while there, pressing record on a cassette player and fingering a keyboard for a bit was literally the only thing I could do, besides lay in bed. I’m not sure why I was even able to do that much, honestly, but making music was truly my only refuge for a year or two.
The grim nature of being in a dark, quiet room alone all day definitely factored into some of the music I was coming up with for a while. I’m glad those moments got recorded, but most are too painful to bear hearing back. Eventually, I figured out how to weave pieces of that experience into larger songs about more than just my immediate experience, which is generally more satisfying to me than sheer hopelessness.
When so many others shut themselves in during the early days of COVID, it was nice to feel more normal. It was also completely fucked, but for a moment, I wasn’t the lone weirdo stuck at home. Seeing so many people return to their lives as the pandemic slightly waned felt like having the flu as a kid, watching through the window as your friends play outside.
I’ve certainly gotten better than I was in late 2017, but I still rarely leave the house. As a songwriter, it’s still pretty easy to tap into the perspective of an outsider, and to lean into the struggle. You can hear that crippled perspective on songs like “My Aim Is True,” and you can hear a sort of isolated longing on “Semaphore.” The physical struggle is pretty upfront on “My Head,” too. I’ve been telling people that the real theme of the album is, “When life gives you lemons, sometimes you just have to fucking live with lemons.”
One of our obligatory questions in these interviews also tends to be the one I have found most important on a personal level. Who are some bands on your radar that TGEFM readers may not know about, but you think they should know about?
For me, punk is a philosophy, not an aesthetic. With that in mind, I think there’s always a ton of exciting music going on.
The Armed are killing it; having Iggy Pop play God in their recent music video was a real coup. Can’t wait for the album!
Model/Actriz are a total rush, like if early NIN had less melody and more queer BDSM. Pure energy music.
Water From Your Eyes are taking risks and looking cool doing it. The album’s not for the faint of heart, but Everyone’s Crushed genuinely sounds new to me.
What’s next for Soft Punch?
More music! I can’t really play shows for the foreseeable future, so I just want to write and record more. I’d be stoked if I could get another album out next year.
Thank you again for your time. Before we say our goodbyes, was there anything I missed that you’d like to share or dive deeper into with our readers?
Join a union. Hug a loved one. Learn to meditate. And for god’s sake, if you care about a band’s music, buy their merch!
Roll of the Dice is a short interview format with a variable amount of questions. A pair of dice is rolled and the total, between 2 and 12, is the amount of questions we can ask. All questions are given to the interviewee(s) at once, and no follow-ups are allowed. The interview may be lightly edited for content and clarity.
Bad Dad (occasionally called Ed) has been on the periphery of the punk and punk-adjacent scene for over twenty years. While many contributors to this site have musical experience and talent, Ed’s musical claim to fame comes from his time in arguably the most punk rock Blockbuster Video district in NJ where he worked alongside members of Blanks 77, Best Hit TV and Brian Fallon. He is more than just an awful father to his 2 daughters, he is also a dreadful husband, a subpar writer, a terrible dresser and has a severe deficiency in all things talent… but hey, at least he’s self-aware, amirite?
Check out the pathetic attempts at photography on his insta at https://www.instagram.com/bad_dad_photography/
