The Soft Boys
Underwater Moonlight... And How It Got There (Matador)
by Marc Hirsh
The Soft Boys
Underwater Moonlight... And How It Got There (Matador)
by Marc Hirsh
originally published in Space City Rock, Fall 2002
Robyn Hitchcock is nothing if not a staunch contrarian. Here comes Matador, then, encouraging one of the very few professional loonies left in the wild by celebrating two decades of the Soft Boys' 1980 new wave touchstone Underwater Moonlight a year late with an expanded rerelease on its wholly adecimal 21st anniversary, just in time for what hairsplitters (like me) are calling their first honest-to-God U.S. tour (the trick is in your definition of "tour"). In so doing, they almost double the album with bonus outtakes, and then almost double that with another disc of demos and rehearsal tracks that trace the album's development from inception to execution (the 3-LP vinyl reissue sees that quadrupling and raises Matador yet another 7" of tracks unavailable on the 2-CD set).
And is it worth it? Probably; the reissue ultimately succumbs to overkill, but it's a pretty smooth ride until then. The original Underwater Moonlight , slightly overpraised, easily earns its keep on the majority of its tracks (only the silly erotic blues of "I Got The Hots" seems flat-out not worth the trouble). "Insanely Jealous" is all tension with no release, gibberish lyrics following a strangely logical progression (typical of Hitchcock's finest moments, of which this is unquestionably one) in the service of painting a picture of the narrator's increasingly unhinged psyche. "I Wanna Destroy You," on the other hand, is just the opposite, all release with no tension, the lyric crystalline in its specificity. The rest of the album swings between those extremes, from the anxious instrumental "You'll Have To Go Sideways" (it's amazing how skewed a simple up-and-down scale can sound when it's done in 7/4 time) to the driving "Positive Vibrations," with the more traditional jangle-pop fare of "Tonight" and "The Queen Of Eyes" briefly, if precariously, finding a balance somewhere in the middle.
Wisely left out of the official running order of Moonlight, most of the bonus tracks that complete disc one nevertheless possess their own (occasionally substantial) charms when taken as the self-contained one-shots that they always were. A few develop ideas that first popped up on Moonlight ; "Strange" slows down and draws out the jangle in fascinatingly uncomfortable directions, the stop-start Bo Diddley beat of "Black Snake Diamond Rock" has a guitar solo that starts out determinedly incompetent before blossoming into canny psychedelia and "There's Nobody Like You" is a happy shuffle that cops the chorus harmonies of "I Wanna Destroy You" (hey, a good idea's a good idea). Others seem to toy with styles against which the Soft Boys would have been rebelling if their energies weren't focused on fighting to be a part of what should have been their own scene. The stomping "Only The Stones Remain" is set atop a beat that is, when you really listen to it, pure disco, and while the echoes of Abba's "Mamma Mia" in the prechorus of "He's A Reptile" (and the Pointer Sisters' "Fire" in the verse) may well be sheer coincidence, Hitchcock being Hitchcock, I would seriously hedge my bets. Less consistent than the album proper, the outtakes (with the possible exception of the aimlessly loopy "Where Are The Prawns?," an unfinished idea which ambles off the track halfway through) at least manage to avoid falling into the overindulgence trap of many reissue bonus tracks.
That line is crossed with the start of disc two's rehearsal tracks, of course, but Matador obfuscates this by keeping the overlap to a minimum, so only three of Moonlight's ten tracks appear in any form. "Underwater Moonlight" is easily the most indispensable of these, housing one of Hitchcock's trademark ramblerants during the middle cooldown (it can easily double the length of the song when they perform it live), excised completely from the album version. The stuttering blues guitar freakout of "Old Pervert," meanwhile, is blessed with alternate lyrics (possibly still in the embryonic stage) but is unnecessarily drawn and quartered across the disc ("Wang Dang Pig," on the other hand, sounds for all the world like the chunk of marble from which it was eventually chipped). Almost everything else is of the textbook-variety outtake school, fascinating to acolytes and one long wash to almost everybody else (although I do profess a fondness for "Over You," despite its failure to accomplish anything "The Queen of Eyes" doesn't do one disc earlier). The sound quality's pretty good, however, even if this stuff wouldn't be confused with releasable recordings (one of the few ways that the Soft Boys didn't anticipate Guided By Voices). Still, there's a reasonable chance that I'll only ever listen to it again to reconfirm that there wasn't anything there the first time.
Ultimately, all the bonus tracks, even the good ones, muck up what would easily stand as the Robyn Hitchcock album for Robyn Hitchcock haters. Underwater Moonlight, more than anything else, captures what a good band the Soft Boys really were. Kimberley Rew's guitar playing throughout is inventive and spirited; the nervous, descending riff during the choruses of "Kingdom of Love" is ridiculously simple but seems thoroughly elusive in its invention while putting the low-key verses in stark relief. Morris Windsor, meanwhile, demonstrates why Hitchcock would keep him in the drum throne for the next two decades; notice how his playing ratchets "Insanely Jealous" even tighter and how his falsetto explodes the harmonies of "I Wanna Destroy You." As for Matthew Seligman, well, he was the new kid at this point, the band having embraced him for just long enough to make its masterwork before imploding, and he wisely chose to anchor the songs (successfully, I might add) rather than showboat. Besides, he played with David Bowie at Live Aid; what did you do in 1985?