It took a decade, but Prince Albert band Softbox has finally released their third album.
The band, which is composed of Kurt Johns on bass and vocals, Jordan Tupper on guitar and Todd Backstrom on drums, released the vinyl-only album ‘Drain’ in October.
Johns said the trio have been friends for a long time and began working on Drain in 2015 before personal events put a stop to recording.
“I started writing and recording the album Drain in 2015, but it didn’t get finished until this last year,” Johns explained.
He said that the band was not doing much but the ideas had been put together in 2015 before they took a break.
“By the time 2015 hit, I had kind of started to put some ideas down but I think I realized pretty quickly that that’s all it was going to be with some ideas,” Johns said.
The entire project, which would have been the bands third release was put on the back burner. He said that once Clay Cottingham began his work with Threadbare Productions in 2023 the band started to get bookings again.
“It was just the right time,” Johns said. “Everything was kind of had come back together because we had started to talk and we had started to jam earlier that year. Then this opportunity came up and then all of a sudden, boom, we were off to the races. We did quite a bit of playing in 2024. and then started working on finishing up the recording.”
Johns said the new album is part of a progression from their first album, Fallen, which was released in 2008, and Interesting, their second album which was released in 2011.
“The big thing that Todd and I really wanted to do, was try mixing it ourselves,” Johns said. “Previously we’ve had a fellow from PA but who’s went on to bigger things, Justin Bender, he mixed our first two albums and we wanted to try and do it ourselves. I don’t think it’s a perfect mix, but I think we did pretty good.”
He said the mixing work is not without flaws but also excellent work for a first attempt.
“I know that there’s imperfections, but I feel that that’s kind of the best that we could do,” he said.
The album is a full length and features seven songs because some of them are long, including ‘Venture’ which is 10 minutes and ‘Every Dark’ is just over nine minutes.
“It is a full length, but there’s a couple of longer pieces on there, so there’s only seven songs,” Johns explained.
He said the lengthy songs are a natural product on the band’s influences.
“I personally have always been a big fan of prog rock, so things like Yes and
old Genesis and Rush and stuff like that. Our drummer, Todd, is more into the heavier side of things, so when we kind of get together, sometimes these long pieces kind of come out,” Johns explained.
In that vein, the album Drain is also a concept album. Their previous album ‘Interesting’ was about television propaganda.
“This album, for whatever reason, I decided to make it a story about an energy vampire, so that story kind of carries through the album, sort of from her birth from, a regular human to some kind of weird energy vampire creature and then how she deals with it through the ages, because it kind of has I suppose about 1,000 years worth of time in there,” Johns said.
Johns added that some band members grew up in the 1980s so they have some different ideas than younger bands.
The band did an album release in October and a show in November and had planned a show in December.
“We were hoping to do the benefit in December,” Johns said. “Unfortunately, that fell through. In February, we’re going to play with our friends, Atomic Yeti, in Saskatoon. I think that’s the only thing. There’s lots of tentative things, but nothing solid.”
michael.oleksyn@paherald.sk.ca
