Spin Alternative Record Guide
Soft Boys:
Wading Through A Ventilator EP (1978; Glass Fish, 1984) 5
Live At The Portland Arms (1978; Glass Fish, 1987) 7
A Can Of Bees (1979; Rykodisc, 1992) 8
Two Halves For The Price Of One (1981; Glass Fish, 1990) 6
Uunderwater Moonlight (1980; Rykodisc, 1992) 9
Only The Stones Remain EP (1980; Rykodisc, 1992) 6
Invisible Hits (1983; Rykodisc, 1992) 8
The Soft Boys 1976-81 (Rykodisc, 1993) 8
Robyn Hitchcock (And The Egyptians):
Black Snake Diamond Role (1981; Rhino, 1995) 5
Groovy Decay (Albion, 1982) 5
Groovy Decoy (1982; Relativity, 1986) 5
Gravy Deco (Rhino, 1995) 5
I Often Dream Of Trains (1984; Rhino, 1995) 7
The Bells Of Rhymney EP (Midnight 1984) 7
Fegmania! (1985; Rhino, 1995) 8
Gotta Let This Hen Out (1985; Rhino, 1995) 7
Eaten By Her Own Dinner EP (Midnight Music, 1986) 5
Invisible Hitchcock (1986; rhino, 1995) 6
Exloding In Silence EP (Relativity, 1986) 5
Element Of Light (1986; Rhino, 1995) 5
Globe Of Frogs (A&M, 1988) 6
Queen Elvis (A&M, 1989) 4
Eye (1990; Rhino 1995) 5
Perspex Island (A&M, 1991) 5
Respect (A&M, 1993) 4
You & Oblivion (Rhino, 1995) 6
by Arnold
The British Isles are well known for fostering eccentrics, but few of the shy woodland creatures actually made their way into Rock bands until The Soft Boys peeped out from behind the amps of a Cambridge pub called The Portland Arms in 1977. A sort of real-life Rutles, this unique and supremely underrated band's music never reached a wide audience, despite late-'70s Britain's favorable climate for bizarre Pop songs.
The Soft Boys' reclusive history is as follows: with the help of fellow band member Kimberley Rew (later of Katrina And The Waves, and thus, the author of the Bangles' lovely hit single "Going Down To Liverpool" among other cheery tunes), an art-school dropout named Robyn Hitchcock merged a lifelong fixation with John Lennon and Syd Barrett with numerous other sources -- notably British Music Hall Foldelrol, Folk music, and The Byrds. This resulted in a jubilant series of wacky Pop songs, ranging from driven paranoiac rockers like "Insanely Jealous", "I Wanna Destroy You", and "Brenda's Iron Sledge", to delighfful nonsense like "Sandra's Having Her Brain Out", "Leppo And The Jooves", and "Have A Heart Betty (I'm Not Fireproof)". "If there's two things worse than Country music, one of them is Punk," Hitchcock remarks facetiously on the 1978 Portland Arms, and his whimsical, word-addled, uniquely British
Pub Rock amounts to Gilbert and Sullivan meet The Sex Pistols. There's track after track of it, each song more peculiar -- and more sing-alongable -- than the last, punctuated every now and then by a ditty like "Queen Of Eyes", which by all rights should have rung out of radios worldwide.
As documented on the often a cappella LP Live At The Portland Arms, The Soft Boys' impromptu reign over the pubs of Cambridge was clearly an idyll now lost in the mists of antiquity. Before petering out around 1983, the band released numerous extremely obscure records on ever obscurer indie labels (A Can Of Bees, for example, was released three separate times, each time in a slightly different form). The three best records -- of which Underwater Moonlight is far and away the standout -- have been reissued on Rykodisc and the rest finally gathered together in
eminently coherent form on a uniformly excellent boxed set entitled The Soft Boys 1976-81. Beats Hell out of combing Portobello Road for scratchy bootleg vinyl.
During the latter part of The Soft Boys' career, Hitchcock began releasing solo material with Black Snake Diamond Role, an album that remains many Boys fans' favorite album, probably because songs like "Brenda's Iron Sledge" and "I Watch The Cars" firmly maintain the band's absurdist slant while rocking out like the harder numbers. However, Hitchcock hadn't yet mastered the gentle gravity and chiming melodicism of later years. Groovy Decoy also released with slightly different songs as Groovy Decay (and then again, recently, as Gravy Deco) includes "The Cars She Used To Drive" nd "America", both conceivably commercial -- but the multiple versions betray Hitchcock's meddling with his own records, which irritated labels no end and, in hindsight, contributed to his continued obscurity. Nevertheless, Hitchcock had by this time achieved cult status among American underground rock aficionados: R.E.M.'s Peter Buck, for one, claims that Soft Boys records influenced him more than The Byrds. Solidifying his rep, on I Often Dream Of Trains, a mostly-unplugged Hitchcock showed his affinities to ultra-British songwriters like Ray Davies and Graham Parker with "Trams Of Old London" and an a cappella ode to Freud called "Uncorrected Personality Traits" that wouldn't have sounded out of place on Benny Hill.
Hitchcock's domestic debut, and breakthrough to the extent possible at the time, Fegmania!, was stuffed with colorful imagery, absurd metaphors and twisted musings on mortality, all packed into catchy little 3-minute Pop tunes. It cemented his position as psychedelic guru of The Amerindie Underground. Though irrevocably flighty ("My Wife And My Dead Wife"), here Hitchcock's songs also hooked into the human worlds of love, fear and lust. Gotta Let This Hen Out!, a live album from the same era, is equally buoyant, awash with Hitchcock's exuberant charm. After this high-water mark, however, Hitchcock's records turned slightly more serious. "Raymond Chandler Evening" and "Winchester" on Element Of Light are evocative portraits of England that don't resort to the goofy wordplay and surreal imaqery that make his early work shine, but elsewhere the effort behind his seemingly off-the-cuff blather was beginning to show.
In 1988, Hitchcock signed to A&M and -- exhausted, perhaps, by a decade of prolific brilliance -- began churning out albums that lacked some essential punchiness that permeates his earlier work. There is, however, no such thing as a worthless Robyn Hitchcock album: Queen Elvis has a memorable title character and "Flesh Number One (Beatle Dennis)" (played on by Pete Buck) may be his most deserving shoulda-been-a-hit since "Queen Of Eyes"; Perspex Island and Eye (Hitchcock's first solo-acoustic project since I Often Dream Of Trains) have their moments as well. It's just that these days the world has less use for debonair Englishmen who write poignant songs about reptiles and Hoover vacuum cleaners. For many a long year, Hitchcock has gotten by on charm alone. But that may not be something to sneer at: charm is, after all, a commodity in extremely short supply, and nowhere as much as in the music business. Only time will tell whether reissues of most of bonuses on Rhino -- Bells Of Rhymney is reissued on I Often Dream, Eaten By Her Own Dinner on Invisible Hitchcock; You & Oblivion collects still more rarities -- will rekindle the flame of love that his compelling erudition once lit in our innocent breasts.
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