Ink Blot
2001
The Soft Boys
Underwater Moonlight
Armageddon/Matador, Released 1980, Reissued 2001
by Bill Meyer
Robyn Hitchcock has made many fine discs in his quarter-century-long recording career, but none betters Underwater Moonlight. It captures the moment when his muse cohered, when his work became more than a clever combination of influences. He and The Soft Boys had dabbled in a myriad of hybrid styles before they made this record, emulating their favorite parts of swooning '60s beat music, Bob Dylan, Captain Beefheart, British Folk Rock, even barbershop quartet. The distinguishing element was Hitchcock's lyrics, which were consumed with malice, leavened with humor, and held together by a knack for finding the very best in cheap rhymes. Underwater Moonlight's songs feature all of those elements, but they have an individual and collective coherence that had previously eluded Hitchcock; they're about him and what's on his mind instead of what's in his record collection.
Each song is sublimely catchy; give one listen to the soaring harmonies on "Queen Of Eyes" and "I Wanna Destroy You", or "Old Pervert"'s churning riff, or "Tonight"'s pulsing bass line, and you'll never extricate them from your head. The same goes for the words; I predict that in another 30 years the English-speaking world's nursing homes will be populated with Alzheimer's patients who can't remember their own names, but sing lines like "You've been laying eggs under my skin/Now they're hatching out under my chin/Now there's tiny insects showing through/And all those tiny insects look like you".
Look at your own rugrats and you'll know what he's singing about -- procreation is as inevitable as infection. Hitchcock's gift for cloaking universal experiences (love, sex, outrage) in bizarre imagery was never more apparent. The band matched his tunes with chiming guitars, driving rhythms, and sublime harmonies that not only matched those of their idols, but were the foundation for the jangle-y guitar invasion that swept every American college campus during the '80s.
Originally Underwater Moonlight was a 10-song LP, but each reissue has lengthened proceedings. Rykodisc's "definitive" version from 1992 swelled it up to 18 songs. The extras were session outtakes that originally came out on singles and the vinyl releases of Invisible Hits and Two Halves For The Price Of One. This one's even bigger; the indelible "He's A Reptile" has been added to the outtakes, and there's an entire second disc of roughly recorded rehearsals that includes previously unheard tunes, works in progress, and covers of songs by Lou Reed and Roxy Music. Rolling Stone editor David Fricke's liner notes set the record in context, charting its progress from an ignored release by an unknown band to one of the finest records in Rock 'n' Roll.
At a glance...
Hometown: Cambridge, England
Year Formed: 1976
Personnel:
Robyn Hitchcock -- vocals, guitar, bass on "Insanely Jealous"
Kimberley Rew -- guitar, vocals, bass, synthesizer on "You'll Have To Go Sideways"
Matthew Seligman -- bass
Morris Windsor -- drums, vocals
Gerry Hale -- violin on "Insanely Jealous" and "Underwater Moonlight"
Andy King -- sitar on "Positive Vibrations"
Related Artists :
Robyn Hitchcock And The Egyptians, Katrina And The Waves
Notes:
The Soft Boys were hopelessly out of time and we're all better off for it. When they formed in 1976, Disco and Punk Rock were sweeping England; there was no place for a band that wrote clever, complicated songs about sexual ambivalence, household objects, and seafood and performed them with immaculate vocal harmonies. They recorded several EPs and one other LP, A Can Of Bees, before bandleader Robyn Hitchcock developed the artistic focus that enabled him to conceive Underwater Moonlight. The album was recorded in 1979 under desperately impecunious circumstances. Following its release The Soft Boys did an eight-date tour of Metropolitan New York and broke up. But they found a receptive audience in America, where the band's ardent and vocal fans included The dBs' Peter Holsapple and R.E.M.'s Peter Buck. Hitchcock pursued a solo career, usually with various Soft Boys (and occasionally Buck) in tow, and Rew formed the early-'80s hitmakers Katrina And The Waves. In the winter of 2001 the Soft Boys lineup that recorded Underwater Moonlight reformed for a proper U.S. tour.
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