Illinois Entertainer
April, 2001
The Soft Boys
Friday, March 30, 2001
Metro, Chicago
by Gwen Ihnat
Another one of those concerts you would have been damn lucky to catch in the '80s: The Soft Boys reunited on Metro's stage last Friday with the original lineup of Robyn Hitchcock, guitarist Kimberley Rew, bassist Matthew Seligman, and drummer Morris Windsor, to the delight of Psychedelic English Pop fans everywhere.
The Boys, precursors to Hitchcock's brilliant two-dozen-albums-plus solo career, have attained cult status in their own right, and rightly so. Did Hitchcock and Rew sport heads of gray for this 20th-anniversary show (matching many audience members)? Yes, they did. And did they rock harder than guitarists half their age? Again, a resounding yes. Rew particularly was awe-inspiring, playing guitar parts that sounded like solos throughout whole songs, a feat basically akin to sprinting for an entire marathon. With this show, Rew inspired yet another generation to reach for guitar parts they previously could only dream about.
The rest of the band also made it seem like 20 minutes, not 20 years, had gone by since the last Soft Boys tour. Hitchcock waxed a bit less poetic than he has done on his recent solo shows, but seemed resoundingly happy to be playing with his old mates again. The oft-covered "I Wanna Destroy You" pleased the crowd immensely, as did the weirder "Old Pervert" and the rare "He's A Reptile", an exemplary hard-rocking sonnet to an aging hipster. Lest you think they have forgotten their most obvious precursor, the Boys cheekily covered Syd Barrett's "Astronomy Domine" (from the first Floyd rekkid).
Matador has re-released The Soft Boys' seminal work Underwater Moonlight, featuring the previously unreleased "Reptile". For your own sake as a music fan, you should check it out -- then keep your fingers and toes crossed that this first Soft Boys reunion will not be the last.
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