Grandaddy announce 20th anniversary reissue of The Sophtware Slump

Grandaddy have announced a reissue of their highly-acclaimed 2000 LP, The Sophtware Slump, celebrating two decades since its release.

The reissue arrives this autumn, and includes the remastered original album alongside various rarities and a newly-recorded version of the album featuring frontman Jason Lytle performing solo on a wooden piano. The reissue spans four LPs, and is available to preorder now for a 20th November release.

The solo version of the record was recorded by Lytle in quarantine. He said: “Because of the pandemic, all of the sudden, I was looking at a real deadline to make the damn thing. Here we go, just like the old days,” in reference to the recording of the original record, done by Lytle in a remote farmhouse. In a 2006 interview, he recalled recording the album “in my boxer shorts, bent over keyboards with sweat dripping off my forehead, frustrated, hungover, and trying to call my coke dealer.”

The record itself captures a mood very specific to the turn of the millennium – attempting to reconcile romanticised Americana with the encroaching ubiquity of consumer electronics. A contemporary and highly-praising NME review of the record begins: “The romanticised American West of rattlesnakes and tumbleweeds has gone. In its place are farms with fax machines, campers with laptops, electricity pylons studding mountain ranges like topographical acupuncture.” It concludes that the band don’t adopt a Luddite attitude, but instead “have found a way to reconcile man and machine – by taking control of the devices at hand and making something truly beautiful, mysterious and timeless. Grandaddy have entered the 21st century with their souls intact. Now they’re making sure we have, as well.”

The word “timeless,” in particular, resonates as the anniversary reissue comes around – in the 20 years since the album’s its themes have remained as relevant as ever. In a statement about the release, Grandaddy guitarist Jim Fairchild said that “With the scope of what Grandaddy has done and what Jason has done in his career, I thought there was room to pay greater attention to my favourite view of him, which is as a songwriter.”

The Sophtware Slump 20th Anniversary Collection also features 2 LPs of rarities, including the vinyl debut of the band’s Signal To Snow Ratio and Through a Frosty Plate Glass EPs. The ‘Wooden Piano’ version will see a standalone release next year. Hear a preview of it with the piano version of Jed’s Other Poem (Beautiful Ground) below.

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