The Boston Globe
March 28, 2001
The Soft Boys With The Young Fresh Fellows At: The Paradise, Monday
Soft Touch Still Satisfies
by Joan Anderman
Like a lot of unsung musical heroes, The Soft Boys were in the right place at the wrong time. They were playing intelligent, literate music in the late-1970s, when the fashion was vacant Arena Rock, tempestuous Punk, and Disco.
There was no reference point for The Soft Boys' mixture of jangly guitar and Neo-Psychedelia, and quirky frontman Robyn Hitchcock's surreal lyricism didn't endear his fledgling band to fist-pumpers, anarchists, or the dance-floor contingent. Too clever for their own good, The Soft Boys drifted into oblivion after releasing two albums.
Matador Records has just reissued The Soft Boys' swan song, 1980's Underwater Moonlight, in celebration of its 20th anniversary. And since the group split up without ever doing an American tour, Monday's show at the Paradise had the feel of an insanely delayed gig to promote the album -- much of which they played.
If the response from the packed audience was any indication, The Soft Boys can look forward to a soft landing, and a warm welcome, circa 2001.
Hitchcock -- whose solo career has endured, thanks to a deeply weird blend of English Folk Rock songcraft and deranged wit -- returned to the fold with his own particular brand of grace intact. He accessorized the paisley guitar riffs of the album's title track with a stream-of-consciousness, spoken-word segment about birth. That oddly enough set the stage for the dirty-groove-slathered "Old Pervert", a song that Hitchcock said should be especially enjoyed by those who are uncertain about the male's role in sexual relationships. Then he apologized to anyone who'd seen the New York show for forgetting the name of the third animal one must be nice to: the Mongolian gerbil.
As if it's the thinking man's only rational response, nonsense is heralded in Hitchcock's musical cosmos. The Soft Boys' sound could have used a bit more of that unhinged approach. Guitarist Kimberley Rew -- who went on to form the Pop band Katrina And The Waves ("Walking On Sunshine") after The Soft Boys split -- played with a manicured gleam that sounded remarkably dated in the Postgrunge millennium. Rew may have been the more technically proficient player, but it was Hitchcock's skewed riffs that burrowed to the essence of these songs.
The songs themselves stood the test of time -- perhaps because they were so ahead of their time 20 years ago. The faux bitterness of "I Wanna Destroy You" (dedicated to George W. Bush) and the magnificently wired "Insanely Jealous" -- a thumbnail sketch that transcends the notion of confessional -- evoked a thoroughly modern sense of sinister beauty. Smart songwriting never goes out of style.
That goes double for openers the Young Fresh Fellows, described by Hitchcock as "possibly the Rock 'n' Roll band in the world." The exuberant Garage Pop heroes from Seattle debuted in 1984 with the seminal The Fabulous Sounds Of The Northwest and disbanded 10 underappreciated albums later in 1993.
The Fellows regrouped to release this year's Let the War Against Music Begin/Because We Hate You -- a double album that packages the band's new material on one disc, and frontman Scott McCaughey's other project, The Minus 5 (with R.E.M.'s Peter Buck), on the other. At The Paradise, they let loose nugget after nugget of masterful Pop songs, old and new, disguised as amphetamine-laced treats. Twenty-one years into their career, the Young Fresh Fellows still have their fingers on the sweet spot where Punk and Pop meet.
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