Humidity and dust",[4] 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".

"[7] 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.

"[6] On August 28, 2020 it was announced that Grandaddy would release a new recording of The Sophtware Slump to mark its 20th anniversary, the whole album being performed solo by Jason Lytle with a piano and no other instruments.

The CMJ New Music Monthly noted Jason Lytle's "new infatuation with technology, expertly juxtaposed with his almost spiritual connection to the West's wide-open spaces and bird-filled skies", and stated that "Lytle expresses sympathy for the lost souls and machines of the high-tech dot-com landscape throughout the album".

[10] The New York Times called the album "a heart-achingly beautiful requiem for a culture in which progress and technology have led to alienation and disposability".

A collection of emotional, richly melodic songs that deal with modern man's uneasy relationship with technology".

[26] Steve Taylor, in his book The A to X of Alternative Music, viewed The Sophtware Slump as "clean, lush and less understated" than the band's previous work, describing "The Crystal Lake" as "a perfectly executed pop song".