Underwater Moonlight

The Soft Boys' Underwater Moonlight is another one of the ten or so albums I'd bring to that desert island. I think it's one of the most awesome albums ever, and if you don't, then you are lame.



The Soft Boys' progression from A Can Of Bees to Underwater Moonlight in one year is staggering if you listen to the albums back to back. Their first album sounds like a young band finding it's form, not sure whether they want to be the Beatles or Captain Beefheart's Magic Band. One year later on Underwater Moonlight, the Soft Boys sound like they'd become the Beatles and made their own version of Revolver, making jangly guitar pop for a new generation. It was the blueprint for R.E.M., the Replacements, and almost every other band that was in heavy rotation on college radio during the 1980s.

When I bought Underwater Moonlight at a record store in Madison, WI (in March 1987, on the day The Joshua Tree came out), it was like finding a missing puzzle piece in my musical aesthetic. I was in Madison for Spring Break, with a budget of just over $100 for the entire week, and ended up dropping $40 in import albums on my first day. I also bought a couple more early Robyn Hitchcock albums (Black Snake and I Often Dream Of Trains) and a reissue of Big Star's Radio City on the same visit, and didn't even end up buying the U2 record that I went to the store to pick up.

I didn't know at the time, but my copy of Underwater Moonlight was the Canadian version with a different sequence and one extra track (a cover of Syd Barrett's "Vegetable Man") from a bonus EP called Near The Soft Boys.

I'm trying to blog about these albums as they were originally released (without bonus tracks), but I can't imagine Underwater Moonlight without "Vegetable Man". A few years later, I got the Glass Fish CD issue with seven more bonus tracks, then I upgraded to Rhino's Underwater Moonlight.. And How It Got There, which added one more single "He's A Reptile", as well as a bonus "how it got there" disc of album rehearsals. This is still available for download on emusic, and is the version to get, even though the rehearsal tapes are less than essential.

The Soft Boys made it to the U.S. to promote Underwater Moonlight but their limited touring budget kept them from venturing beyond metro New York. Lack of money also prevented the label (Armageddon) from promoting the album, and the Soft Boys quietly broke up in early 1981. Twenty years later, they reunited for a proper American and European tour, followed by a new album in 2002.

When the Soft Boys reunited in 2001, Robyn started dedicating "I Wanna Destroy You" to the newly elected George W. Bush, so I can't hear that song without thinking of our former President. Eight years later, parts of Underwater Moonlight sound like a political statement from the dawn of Thatcherism and Reaganism. "I Wanna Destroy You" and "Positive Vibrations" ("there you go, killing for peace. Don't you know you'll never get peace anymore. Just get war") are some of the most political, and direct songs that Robyn Hitchcock has ever wrote.

In short, Underwater Moonlight rules. The End.
Update: Happy Birthday, Robyn!