Sounds
October 21, 1978
Soft Boys
Hope And Anchor
by David Hepworth
The first time I came up against The Soft Boys, about six months back, they struck me as being incompetent and singularly pretentious. In the interim they've wet the dotted line with Radar Records and, either by accident or the shrewdest of designs, hitched their wagon to the rising star of the new music. Things have changed. They are now competent.
Highly competent. They're a four piece (with floating percussionist), driven by two harsh guitars on a deft rhythm house, vocals striking and meticulously executed; the resultant sound is spiky, all edges but balanced, with faint echoes of the Magic Band 'round about Clear Spot time if nothing like as primal. No, these boys have style, wit, startling skills and if I never ever see them again during what's left of my earthly trudge then that'll be a fair few light years to soon.
So much for objectivity. By this time next year they'll have been touched by the magic hand of the media, their records will be in the lists and if by that time I can summon any clear reaction other than pure white hate for their collective works and all that they stand for then either they'll have undergone radical changes or my doctor will be whacking out some mighty strange pills. With the honourable exception of the bloke behind me who took to muttering "poofter" under his breath (I assume he was from the New Statesman), the remainder of the assembled throng obviously hadn't had so much fun since the last strike meeting at Time Out, their keen eyes gleaming as the Hope And Anchor resounded to the muted tinkle of intellectual references dropped like expensive cutlery.
I blame the education system; they must have learnt all this at university. The Soft Boys wear their immense learning and all-'round cultural acumen like most bands wear narrow ties -- around their necks as if it meant something -- and everybody crowds in to warm their hands around the source of all this transparent intelligence as if mere contact with it will ward off all those proletarian dullards whose names are spray-canned on the walls of the cellar. "We play a, kind of, Aztec R&B." (Everybody chuckles knowingly.)
Ah, just drink in the scabrous wit, the gleaming aphorisms, the sardonic way they mock and mangle anything that seems to be the "accepted" way; we simply must have them 'round for dinner.
By closing time they've lampooned the lot; everything neatly bundled and clumped on your doorstep with appropriate comments and 'round about this point I guess you're supposed to be cleansed by their steady contempt, newly aware and hot to trot the dance of the modern world to some truly innovative jive. And then the high-spot of the act. It ends. So there you hang suspended, all your dearest cliches trampled underfoot, slowly realising that it would be well beneath the substantial dignity of these young blades to do anything as plain reactionary as putting anything of their own in the clearing they've made for themselves except for the lingering traces of their own overweening and tiresome cynicism.
Introduction to the last number: "Love is like a bag of crisps -- if you leave it open long enough someone's bound to eat it." (Laugh? I thought I'd...) Who honestly needs and craves this brand of world-weary phrasemaking when you can get your own epigrams out of your own christmas crackers? Living proof that there are places in Rock 'n' Roll where A levels just get in the way, The Soft Boys are a very good band if this is the kind of very good band you're looking for.
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