1979
Soft Boys
Newcastle
by Ian Ravendale
Humour's a funny thing, as I think Billy Connolly once remarked. Rock 'n' Roll can be such a po-faced business that anyone who isn't intense or who attempts to walk over conventions, laughing as he goes, is all-too-often dismissed as a charlatan or a would-be all-'round entertainer. Cries of "Smart-aleck," from those who recognise that an idea is supposed to be funny but can't see the joke. The Soft Boys provoke just that reaction.
The reviewers of their Can Of Bees album have either failed to "get the joke" or have tripped over themselves in some sort of doublethink, where because the song lyrics are "clever" it follows that they "don't communicate". Communicate what, I wonder?
The Softs have their own frame of reference that doesn't really fit in with anything else currently doing the rounds. Like the best song of the set, "Leppo And The Jooves", which songsmith and main vocalist Robyn Hitchcock (who looks like a less-degenerate Nick Lowe, incidentally) explains thus: "Leppo is a character who's pursued 'round the world by the Jooves. Each day they catch him and let him go again because they don't want him for anything. And this keeps happening day after day." Or "Return Of The Sacred Crab" about a girl who sees an apparition of her lover as a seven-foot giant silver crab in a restuarant car and he offers her a cigar.
It must be stated that The Soft Boys are not a "comedy" act. You don't come away rolling with mirth. They're a Pop Rock band, roughly akin to, say, The Records, who can move along quite smartly. All five can sing and it's probably in this area that they're let down as the harmonies can be a bit off and Hitchcock's lead vocals sometimes don't end up where they should. Some more work on this, maybe.
These lads are going to have a hard time of it. The album is one their own label so they don't have any backing. They aren't part of any recognisable movement or fashion of the moment and are extremely unlikely to be tipped as anything remotely resembling "The Next Big Thing". Keep pushing against the current Boys, and I'll have my bees canned.
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