August 21, 1982
Continuous Soft Hits
Robyn Hitchcock has said, "What I'm about is something long and inevitable -- and I haven't finished yet. But it's a very long train, and you can't see the beginning or the end of it. One day it'll stop, and somebody'll get off and explain everything." The early leg of Hitchcock's mystic trip was spent with the Soft Boys, whom he founded in the mid-seventies along with Kimberley Rew (later of Katrina And The Waves), Morris Windsor, and Andy Metcalfe (now both with Hitchcock's current band, The Egyptians). Rykodisc has now released the three "official" Soft Boys albums, all available domestically for the first time in any format: A Can Of Bees (RCD 20231), Underwater Moonlight (RCD 20232), and Invisible Hits (RCD 20233).
These three albums, cult classics since their original release, chronicle Hitchcock's output during the English Punk explosion, a period during which the eccentric Soft Boys just didn't fit in with any popular trend. The band's live shows were cabarets of the absurd, edgy Pop punctuated with Hitchcock's trademark stream-of-consciousness monologues. Hitchcock fans only now discovering these albums will find themselves peering beneath a familiar stone on the lawn to reveal a fascinating array of musical worms and insects. Veteran fans will agree that these decade-old works find Hitchcock marvelously raw and creative, inking pithy peculiarities and making his earliest charted journeys through the complex labyrinth of perhaps the most oddly appealing, deceptively profound songwriting mind of our time.
A Can Of Bees, The Soft Boys' debut, rocks a bit harder than their name would imply, and includes a live version of their early single "(I Wanna Be An) Anglepoise Lamp". Underwater Moonlight, the second album, is generally regarded as the band's best, and in a perfect world would have been as successful as Revolver or Who's Next. It was certainly as influential to a select bunch of current artists. (Uncle Tupelo and The Replacements have both covered Soft Boys numbers, and their name pops up on many prestigious "influence lists" including that of R.E.M.'s Pete Buck.) Invisible Hits gathers together an odd and tasty assortment of B-sides, outtakes, and alternate versions.
The Soft Boys' recordings have been digitally remastered, and all three albums include a thorough selection of bonus tracks. All were personally overseen by Hitchcock himself. Underwater Moonlight sports a Hitchcock painting on the back cover that was an alternate front cover at one time. With these albums, as with the Big Star releases in early 1992, Rykodisc takes another step in completing a gestalt which enables discriminating music fans to understand how "Popular" music, for better or worse, has arrived in its current state, and to lament that bands like the Soft Boys weren't more commercially successful. The Soft Boys, to this day, seem to have been simultaneously ahead of and behind their time.
Rykodisc and Robyn Hitchcock are also developing a (as-yet untitled) double-disc Soft Boys collection, including much rare material, slated for release in early 1993.
Press contact: Carrie Anne Svingen
Radio contact: Jim Neill
RykodiscUSA
Pickering Wharf, Bldg. C
Salem, MA 01970
508 744 7678
FAX 598 741 4506
COPYRIGHT NOTICE