The Sophtware Slump
| The Sophtware Slump | ||||
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| Studio album by Grandaddy | ||||
| Released | May 29, 2000 | |||
| Genre | ||||
| Length | 46:47 | |||
| Label | V2 | |||
| Producer | Jason Lytle | |||
| Grandaddy chronology | ||||
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| Singles from The Sophtware Slump | ||||
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| Professional ratings | |
|---|---|
| Aggregate scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Metacritic | 81/100 |
| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| AllMusic |   |
| Entertainment Weekly | A− |
| Los Angeles Times | |
| Melody Maker |  |
| NME | 9/10 |
| Pitchfork | 8.5/10 |
| Q | |
| Rolling Stone | |
| The Rolling Stone Album Guide | |
| The Village Voice | A− |
The Sophtware Slump is the second studio album by American indie rock band Grandaddy. It was released in May 2000 by record label V2. It is seen by some as a concept album about problems concerning modern technology in society.
The album was released to critical acclaim.
The album was written and recorded by frontman Jason Lytle alone in a remote farmhouse. He has been quoted as saying: "I just remember everything out there was dusty. Humidity and dust", and described having made the recordings "in my boxer shorts, bent over keyboards with sweat dripping off my forehead, frustrated, hungover and trying to call my coke dealer".
Being their second album, the title The Sophtware Slump is a reference to a sophomore slump, a term given to an artist's second album which is seen to fail to live up to the first album.
"Jed the Humanoid" concerns an android named Jed, and is a eulogy for the robot, who drinks himself to death. Regarding Jed, who also appears in "Jed's Other Poem (Beautiful Ground)" and had appeared earlier in the song "Jeddy 3's Poem" from the 1999 EP Signal to Snow Ratio, Lytle noted: "I used Jed as my therapy vehicle, I guess... I was attempting to approach the subject of drinking, and possibly the fact that you may perhaps drink a little bit too much. [...] Humour has always been way up there at the top of my list of dealing with anything that could be considered serious. Sometimes you don't wanna be smacked in the face with certain bits of reality like that." A music reviewer for The Guardian, Dorian Lynskey, called it "the saddest robot song ever written."
The album's penultimate song, "Miner at the Dial-a-View", originates from a 1989 home demo, with Lytle noting: "After a certain point, when the Earth has been tapped of all its resources, they start mining other planets. And there's these machines – they're a lot like, y'know, the tabletop poker games that you find in bars now – and the idea is to add coins to it, and you can punch in the latitude and longitude of places on earth, and revisit wherever you want. And [the narrator]'s actually revisiting his house, and he's seeing the girl that he's got back home is hanging out with some other guy, and he misses home."
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