The Times
March 10, 2001
Underwater Moonlight (1980) (Reissued by Matador, 2001)
£15.99 (0870 160 8080)
by The Vulture
At the end of the Punk-crazed '70s, being a long-ish-haired former art student with a psychedelic imagination and a tendency to name songs "(I Wanna Be) An Anglepoise Lamp" was not the safest path to critical acceptance. Yet Robyn Hitchcock, The Soft Boys' unconventionally gifted singer-songwriter, had little time for prevailing orthodoxies, and 1980's Underwater Moonlight was more concerned with frangible West Coast harmonies and a literate surrealism honed by a love of Captain Beefheart and Syd Barrett. Recorded in the Cambridge University boathouse on a pitiful budget, the guitarist Kimberley Rew, the bassist Matthew Seligman, and the drummer Morris Windsor brought Hitchcock's tales of sexual obsession, paranoia, and insect infestation to clammy life.
However, this clutch of superb songs hatched into a hostile environment, and within months the Soft Boys split up. Yet their influence on the '80s American underground scene was acute -- R.E.M. have paid particular homage to Hitchcock -- and it would be good to think that this reissue finally signals their rightful repayment.
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