The Soft Boys - Underwater Moonlight
#271
By Brian Kushnir
Soft Boys
Underwater Moonlight
Genre: Neo-Psychedelic Freak Show
Allen’s Rating: 4.5 out of 5
Brian’s Rating: 4 out of 5
Allen’s Highlights:
I Wanna Destroy You
Kingdom of Love
Underwater Moonlight
Brian’s Highlights:
I Wanna Destroy You
Queen of Eyes
Kingdom of Love
Old Pervert
Robyn Hitchcock’s got a saucerful of secret sauce. Robyn Hitchcock. You hear the name and you think, that’s that guy that so many bands worshiped, a “songwriters songwriter.” Maybe you like, maybe you don’t, but you know the name. I mean who didn’t he influence? He didn’t influence Metallica, but besides that pretty much every band that came out in the mid-80s feels compelled to give him some props. So here we have his late 70’s/early 80’s band The Soft Boys and their 2nd LP “Underwater Moonlight” and lo and behold it’s one of the “1001 albums you must hear before you die,” so stakes are high for this review. Not to mention I heard it made Lulu swoon. What to make of Robyn? He’s surely a nimble and prolific tunesmith. 40 years later he’s still bangin’ out the sweet neo-Beatlesque hummable melodic familiar-feeling tunes with a cheeky charm, witty, clever lyrics that take absurd turns on a dime. It’s 1980 so is he making a statement: “I am the anti-punk?” Is he the punk Puck? He’s definitely got a Syd Barret fetish, let’s face it. So with that in mind as you cue this one up, fair warning: don’t take the “neo-psychedelic classic” shorthand of “Underwater Moonlight” as a stage direction to drop a dose of acid before listening. This is not Jerry Garcia’s long strange trip. In fact this folks is bad-trip psychedelia. Winking at you from the surface of the sea, The Soft Boys have a hard dark underbelly. They are the troubled id that is bubbling beneath, the stuff of shamans, the messed-up wiring under the boards. Just to be clear, the whole of “Underwater Moonlight” sounds super freakin sweet on headphones. And any track on here would be perfectly on-point as between-set music at Spaceland, Echoplex, Zebulon, or wherever else the cool kids are going. It blasts right out of the gates with “I Wanna Destroy You” in a shower of powerpop psychedelia, proto-shoegaze, glittering guitars and harmonies, pulling you in, daring you not to think ‘damn this is some tight shit.
TIGHT.
The multiple guitars, memorable melodies, layered vocal harmonies, tasty echo … all combine in a confectioners frenzy. Give this a listen, it will sound good. It will sound damn good! Or maybe it's a complete piss take? Let’s see… Does it have a surf rock song in 7/4 with a farfisa organ solo? You bet your trippin balls it does. Sitar solo? Natch. The songwriting fairly tricks you into thinking you are listening to cotton candy ice cream. Musically, you’ll feel you’re on familiar territory. Bands that have jangled from before and from after. Beatles. Byrds. Floyd. Beatles. Cheap Trick. REM. Husker Du. Placemats. The Jazz Butcher!!!! All those folks that influenced and were influenced. Just don’t pay too much attention to the lyrics as they will mess with your head. Because while the songs on “Underwater Moonlight” are damn catchy and even fast earworm material, these are not the kind of lyrics you want on endless repeat when you’re drifting off to sleep. Some samples: “When I have destroyed you I’ll come picking at your bone.” “You’ve been laying eggs under my skin. Now they’re hatching out under my chin.” “Said the curry to the corpse, I got the hots for you” “This feeling of insanity is thicker than a barge upon a shattered heap of coal” “Well, they say that I'm weird and disinfectant is the only thing I drink” “In this horrible age of abuse and decay, It's good to know that somebody is looking okay” “The tiny pointy icicles are riding on my bicycles” OK, I made up the last one, which makes me wonder what really is Hitchcock after with these lyrics matched to the sweet sweet melodies. Ok, he likes Syd Barret. What makes me hesitant to embrace my inner Hitchcock is that he always seems to be shooting a nod and a wink with his lyrics, a nod to a place that doesn’t feel especially comfortable to many people. I can listen and sing along to the beautiful sounds of “Underwater Moonlight” with a knowing and chin stroking smile, I can even have the songs running through my head on infinite loop, but getting lost in it scares me. But hey, it is a great listen, listen to it after all as they say you must hear this album before you die! (cue Madcap laugh….)
<Coda> HItchcock sings about being “Insanely Jealous” of you. One can only speculate as to the “you” who he was jealous of and what drove him to the insanity that he sings about. That said, Hitchock’s mate in the Soft Boys, Kimberly Rew, went on to found Katrina and The Waves and then write “Walking on Sunshine,” one of the biggest “feel good” songs of the 80s and maybe of all time.
