The Toronto Star
March 22, 2001
Soft Boys Live
by Ben Rayner
The Rock reunion has become as much of a cliche as the mid-concert drum solo or the weighty concept album probing humanity's relationship with technology.
News that defiantly odd and unfashionable British Punk-era quartet The Soft Boys would be hooking up after some 16 years apart for a short tour this year thus prompted the usual mixed reaction: sure, it'll be neat to see the lads together again, but why must they, too, join the parade of paunchy rockers putting old "creative differences" aside to cash in on past notoriety with yet another globetrotting nostalgia trip?
The Soft Boys differ from most groups hobbling around the reunion circuit in one major way, though. One of Rock's greatest oversights, they don't really have anything to cash in on besides near-complete obscurity.
"It's definitely been good-hearted, and it isn't manufactured," says garrulous bassist Matthew Seligman of the reunion. "Most bands that get back together are trying to recreate former glories -- fame, success. But we really don't have any success to recreate. I mean, we just got absolutely nowhere."
If the young Soft Boys -- Seligman, Morris Windsor, Kimberley Rew, and loopy frontman Robyn Hitchcock -- were to emerge from the Cambridge pub scene today rather than in 1977, mind you, they'd probably be just as spectacular a commercial failure.
While the Boys repeatedly demonstrated themselves capable of penning exquisite would-be radio candy, Hitchcock's surreally demented wordplay and the band's irreverent, Punk-ish take on '60s and '70s Pop history skewed them too much toward the bizarre for mass tastes. After releasing a handful of undeservedly ignored records, the group eventually split in frustration in 1984, not long after its first and last trip to North America.
"It wasn't because we hated each other or anything -- we just couldn't see any future in it," says Hitchcock. "There really wasn't enough to keep it going, and I think we all felt that we could do no worse on our own than we could do together."
Hitchcock, of course, has enjoyed considerably more success since The Soft Boys' demise as a self-professed "solo cult figure", although not enough that he's escaped being unfairly dropped from a couple of major-label deals. Rew, meanwhile, briefly scaled the charts during the '80s as a member of Katrina And The Waves, while Windsor played with Monochrome Set and was a member of Hitchcock's old band, The Egyptians.
Seligman, for his part, left the Rock world altogether after serving time with the likes of the Thompson Twins and Thomas Dolby, and a brief stint as a David Bowie sideman to become, of all things, a barrister.
All along, The Soft Boys' oeuvre gradually amassed new fans. The 1980 album Underwater Moonlight is a fixture on critics' lists of Rock's greatest moments, and Rykodisc gave the Boys a posthumous career boost by excavating most of the catalogue for the CD generation in the excellent 1993 box set, 1976-1981.
It's another reissue, American indie Matador Records' re-release of Underwater Moonlight, that's prompted the current Soft Boys reunion tour, which arrives at the Horseshoe Tavern (370 Queen St. W.) next Wednesday.
Hitchcock -- perhaps emboldened by a Soft Boys gig at Seligman's wedding reception last summer -- hatched the idea of a reunion while searching for a label to reissue the out-of-print album last summer.
"We, sort of rang, everybody up, and Matthew said, 'Let's audition ourselves to see if we can do it,'" recalls Hitchcock, approaching 48. "We had our audition and we passed it. Just about."
Seligman concedes he was The Soft Boy dogged by the most self-doubt, since he'd played only sporadically since leaving the Rock world for High Street.
"I really, really thought I couldn't do this, that I just couldn't keep up," he admits. "There's a really physical side to bass playing. It's sounding good, but I'm still nervous enough to be practicing every day and going down to the gym."
They're not packing stadiums like Roxy Music or The Guess Who, true, but The Soft Boys are chuffed to find themselves playing larger venues on this tour than they did in their brief non-heyday. Some of the new fans can be traced to Hitchcock's solo career, but word-of-mouth has incrementally increased the ranks of the Soft Boys faithful every year since the band broke up.
"I think we've done quite well, kind of, outside of time," agrees Hitchcock." We've done much better as ghosts than we actually did as a real thing."
Adds Seligman: "Maybe it's, kind of, almost unique. I suppose there are always records around that people miss at the time, but there's not so often that there's a whole band. In a way, our best move was splitting up.
"We weren't needed to promote ourselves. And in fact, that's one of the things that will be discovered in the next few months. It'll either be better with us around to promote it, or it'll be worse."
Hitchcock and Seligman both confirm the existence of new Soft Boys recordings that might form an album sometime in the near future, but Underwater Moonlight remains a fine introduction to the band for contemporary audiences. The album's witty Power Pop ditties draw on a broad enough time period for inspiration that they've barely dated, and there are enough bands around cut from the same oddball, record-scavenging cloth -- They Might Be Giants, Pavement, The New Pornographers, and Brit backcountry weirdos The Beta Band are all distant relatives -- that the music and the Matador stamp of hipness could belatedly turn a new generation onto the Soft Boys.
"We weren't really part of the '60s, and we weren't really part of the '70s and '80s. But what we were was a great Rock band, a great Pop band," says Hitchcock. "If we had to go and represent Planet Earth somewhere, playing guitars and [singing] harmonies (and things like that), I think we'd do a good job of it.
"It's just possible that we might be some group from Pensacola who's, sort of, straggled into a studio and made a record. The music could be current. It doesn't have 'vintage' stamped all over it."
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