Customer Reviews

Underwater Moonlight . . . And How It Got There

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This is a brilliant album.

If you don't have it yet (and most of you won't - hardly anyone ever did), you should buy two copies; one for yourself and one for your best friend. See, this is not just any old album that you can invite people to simply take home for a weekend. Oh no!

So what does it sound like?

Underwater Moonlight sounds like nothing on earth so much as Monty Python, backed by the Byrds or (in the Soft Boys' tougher moments) the Kinks. If that isn't enough to suck you in, just listen to the first four tracks. Simply, my life was never the same again after hearing I Wanna Destroy You for the first time. This is punk, but not punk: it's noisy but arty, deadly serious in its content but utterly hilarious in its delivery, and it has vocal harmonies from outer space. It's fabulous.

Then there's Kingdom of Love. It starts off quiet and ends in a joyful rapture, with a brilliant snaking guitar lead that coils and uncoils itself as Robyn Hitchcock surrenders himself to the most confusing of human emotions: "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 them tiny insects look like you." Python's Terry Gilliam would have made a great cartoon sequence out of it.

Positive Vibrations was written on the day Robyn's dog died. Thatcher and Reagan had just been elected and Robyn wanted to shoo all that awfulness away, so he sat down and wrote this little hippie anthem at a time when everyone hated hippies. It features possibly the only excusable sitar solo in rock history, is the fastest song on the album, and is catchier than typhoid.

I Got the Hots, by way of contrast, is a creeping sleazoid crawl. I won't bother to describe it further; just quote the following: "Said the dentures to the peach/said the tide of filth to the bleach/said the spike to the tomato/said the curry to the corpse/I got the hots for you." And that's just the first verse.

Insanely Jealous is more lyrical flights of fancy over a heartbeat bass and a quivering violin. It builds into a demented rage of guitars with Robyn babbling about being jealous of everything from the people that you love to the fingers in your glove. He sounds like he means it too, which is the scary bit.

Tonight is a romantic trip to a harmonic heaven about which no more needs to be said.

You'll Have To Go Sideways is an instrumental number, an oddity for a band for whom lyrics play such a big role. But it's another highlight on an album stuffed with gems, compelling and unsettling in that, for once, it leaves everything unsaid. It's mysterious and beautiful.

Have I mentioned Kimberley Rew yet? Kimberley plays lead guitar like, as Hitchcock once described, "Hendrix in sulphuric acid ... or Hendrix ON sulphuric acid". You can hear that style most clearly on Old Pervert, a Beefheartian nightmare of fiends and ghouls. Kimberley went on to Katrina and the Waves, for whom he wrote Walking on Sunshine.

Next to Tonight, Queen of Eyes is the prettiest number on the album, two minutes of gorgeous retro pop. It really does sound like the early Byrds, and like Kingdom of Love might have been a hit if not for Robyn describing the object of his affections "with her carapace shell and her black-lace thighs".

And then there's the title track: a psychedelic masterpiece of weirdness about two statues who go out for a night on the town together. Although better heard on the out of print 1976-1981 Ryko compilation (which features a hilarious Hitchcock monologue at its centre), this is the quintessential Soft Boys, the stuff those who've only heard the name, and wondered what they sound like, will be expecting.

Like I said, this is a brilliant album. Buy two.

The Soft Boys were one of the best live post-punk acts I ever saw - heavy, eclectic, playful, with a singer like Rasputin the mad monk who ranted some awesomely perverse and intricate lyrics. However, they never escaped the underground. They had two problems: first, they never translated onto record. This, their best, is a great document, but generally sounds too polite, and has a way too clean, over-trebly production. An all-time Top 100 record in my book, this is the one most needing a decent remaster. Second, their material was quite difficult to get a handle on. Unlike other bands of the time, who attempted complete rejection of existing musical forms, Soft Boys foreshadowed the modern rock-history-as-resource attitude, borrowing harmony vocals, garage-psychedelic stylings and Beefheart skronk to form a kind of complex, psychologically disturbed post-rock which was nothing like the de rigeur dubby, chickenscratch minimalism of a Banshees or PiL. Also, they were much less obviously finger-givers than people like the Gang of Four or The Pop Group, and the anti- attitude tended to be where it was at. All this made it difficult for angry young men of the time to get a handle on the group.

Despite these issues leading to the instant obscurity of the band, `Underwater Moonlight' is ageing very well and the content is so good it deserves top rating. Basically a pop record, it covers a lot of styles and much trad pop content (as well as some mad surrealist stuff never seen before), including the time-honoured boy-girl theme, which, it has to be said, gets a radical seeing-to: `Insanely Jealous' is by some distance the best-ever song about obsession after being dumped, with murderously manic lead which blows your head off despite the production. `I Wanna Destroy You' hates everyone, but is dressed in seductive harmonies. It's also very funny. `Kingdom of Love' is a standout, a song whose chosen metaphor for sexual obsession is chin-infesting lice with heads that look like that of the object of desire. Yes, that's right. `Old Pervert' is a great track about feeling unattractive, over-sexed, and past it, buying into the neuroses that afflicted intellectual long-maccers at the time (well, me anyway). My personal favourite, though, is `You'll Have To Go Sideways', an instrumental which gets the Soft Boys' intransigent onstage lock-down absolutely right, with the group climbing one of their signature interlocking staircase structures. Insane arpeggios are backed by psychedelic swathes of glare-delay; this is manic psychedelia for mathematicians. Everything else is good-to-great as well.

All in all 'Underwater Moonlight' is a beautiful reminder of the creativity, intelligence and honesty which music briefly went through in the post-punk years, just before everyone went entryist and eighties synth-pop was inflicted upon us. It deserves to be much better known.

1980. The buzz was on about U2. Chris Blackwell commented that "it's the most important signing since King Crimson". With little fanfare and even less sales The Soft Boys' Underwater Moonlight appears. In the midst of new wave and 80's rock it causes little more than a ripple in a puddle. My how that ripple has grown in twenty years. Underwater Moonlight now resonates with the depth and great songwriting that would become a hallmark of Robyn Hitchcock's career.

Amazingly, that ripple has grown into a wave and influenced a number of other bands (in much the same fashion as the Velvet Underground's first album. Brian Eno's commenta about the VU could also apply to the Underwater Moonlight. It didn't sell a lot but everyone that bought it started a band). Yes, Robyn Hitchcock's offcenter songwriting is the center piece of the album but hardly the only thing that makes this great album notable; Kimberly Rew's sharp and incisive guitar playing creates a distinctive sound that may recall the past ( the Byrds, Beatles, Barrett era Pink Floyd and Captain Beefheart) but clearly echoes that past like a fine work of literature.

This deluxe reissue has the original album plus 2 bonus tracks on the first disc. The second disc consists of rehearsal recordings and outtakes of songs some of which would show up on Hitchcock's solo albums. After the split the band found success and critical acclaim. Hitchcock had a minor hit with Balloon Man that broke him to a much larger audience. Kimberly Rew returned to his first band The Waves (renamed Katrina and the Waves)and began penning a number of pop classics including Walking on Sunshine. Matt Seligman went on to a great career as a studio musician (he was an acclaimed studio pro prior to the band)and continued to back both Hitchcock and others.

They've managed to pull of the best trick of all; the Soft Boys will be touring again. They can finally bask in the acclaim that was so elusive the first time around.

I have to admit to having slightly mixed feelings about the practice of issuing classics with all kinds of extra cuts. I am enormously grateful to possess the extras, but except in the case of SWEETHEART OF THE RODEO by the Byrds (where they add on all the original recordings with Gram Parsons that were rerecorded when his former manager embroiled him in a lawsuit), the extras are almost never even remotely as good as the original. Invariably, you discover that the real gold was there from the beginning. And this exhaustive version of UNDERWATER MOONLIGHT is no exception. The extras are nice, but the original album is still what makes buying it worthwhile. But as extras go, I do have to say that I was quite surprised at just how very good the extras on this album were. The songs are consistently interesting, some are quite excellent, and the playing is always superb. For instance, "There's Nobody Like You" features some absolutely stellar guitar work.

The original UNDERWATER MOONLIGHT was simply one of the truly great albums of the 1980s, and is still perhaps Robyn Hitchcock's finest achievement. Every song on the original album was brilliant, and the playing was sharper than Hitchcock was to receive later with The Egyptians. The worst song was at least very good, while several were nothing short of masterpieces. The album stars brilliantly with the stunning "I Wanna Destroy You," and continues on through one great song after another, from "Kingdom of Love and "Positive Vibrations" to "I Got the Hots" and "Insanely Jealous," before ending with "Queen of Eyes" and the epic title track.

It is hard now to remember who shockingly original the Soft Boys were when they first hit the scene. Taking their name from William S. Burroughs, they managed to be musically original, punkishly aggressive, artistically edgy, and amazingly quirky all at the same time. I have remained a Robyn Hitchcock fan ever since this album, but I'm not sure he has ever been this on the edge since. Kimberley Rew gave the band a spectacular harshness that Hitchcock has not always possessed. The quirkiness has come to play more and more a role in Hitchcock's music since. Anyone who has seen him live knows that in between songs he can engage in some verbal digressions that are simultaneously hysterically funny and clinically odd at the same time (I don't think there is any question that he could be either a stand up comedian or a comic performance artist if he so chose). I think the other members of the Soft Boys helped give his music a richness he did not always find later, even though one could argue that his songwriting would continue to improve.

I notice that Amazon has labeled this one of the Essentials, and so it is. Whenever I peruse someone's record or CD collection and see that they have this album, I always know that they know their music. Anyone who loves music and doesn't already own this, needs to.

Underwater Moonlight, (The second studio album from the soft boys) is in my opinion one of the best albums ever. The soft boys first album, A can of bee's is more of a harder album than Underwater Moonlight, that doesn't live up to the consistancy on underwater moonlight. Every song on here, weather you've got the original album with the original ten songs, or you've got the newer release, (...and how it got there) along with the original ten songs, it's all great. The music and the lyrics are both at five star material. This music speaks to you weather your young or old. The sound is remarkable and has extrordinary vocals that harmonize perfectly to give the band it's signature sound ex., I wanna destoy you, Underwater Moonlight (the song) and reminds me of The Kinks, REM, and The Replacements. You can definetly see how this band influenced all the great 80's underground power pop bands to come. Pick this one up and you will not want to put it down.

the soft boys have a peculiar mix of influences and underwater moonlight exemplifies that wonderfully. they wear their influences on their sleeves(the beatles,syd barret,the byrds), but on this album they have enough originality to make it their own. robyn hithcock's lyrics are best described as arranged stream of conscience...being that he'll take random, off kilter thoughts and put them together to make a cohesive theme(most of the time). the music provides a superb backdrop to this. the band are very tight players(not in the sessionman sense)and stylistically diverse as well. whether playing hyper rock & roll(i wanna destroy you), jangly pop(the queen of eyes), or loopy krautrock-ish instrumentals(you'll have to go sideways), the band pulls it off with ease. if you're a fan of late 70's-early 80's british music(wire,gang of four,joy division,etc.), but get tired of the gloominess and (sometimes) pretentiousness of it, you owe it to yourself to check this out. it will be a welcome break.

Originally I got to know this album because my brother bought it, mainly to hear the Soft Boys' version of Syd Barret's "Vegetable Man" (the original is available only in bootleg form).

"Underwater Moonlight" was the album on which the songwriting talent of Robyn Hitchcock came to fruition, producing not only the incredible songs on the album itself, and the outtakes, but also even some of the songs that never made it out of rehearsal but are contained on the second disk "...And How it Got There". Songs like "Alien" and Wang Dang Pig" show Hitchcock was on a songwriting roll in late '79 - early '80. Another revelation was the fun and catchy "He's A Reptile", which wasn't on the earlier CD version. It's too bad the Soft Boys broke up after this album- though on the other hand if they had stayed together, Hitchcock wouldn't have gone on to produce albums like the sublime (but very differant) "I Often Dream of Trains".

My original vinyl copy of this was always on my 'desert island' lists -- not a bad tune on it. Warning: I am a diehard Robyn Hitchcock fan, so I'm not sure I can be objective, but this was the album that introduced me to Robyn, and this band broke up shortly after I bought this. After 20 years, it still holds up. Many people have said this was not of its time in 1980, but I disagree: 1980 was when punk was less raw and more thoughtful, when the reverb of the garage was creeping back in. It was a groundbreaking album, but certainly not alone, just driven a bit more underground than what else was happening in 1980. Another reviewer called this a cross between the Byrds and Monty Python, (not inaccurate) but I'll venture to say there's a healthy dose of psychedelic garage covering the whole thing. Basic line-up of a classic great garage band: handsome and eerily charming lead singer (on guitar as well), interestingly inventive lead guitar player, melodic bassist, and solid drummer. So, here's the CD version. This had been released before on Cd, but not with the packaging and outtakes, and as an import with a huge $$$. So I was overjoyed to see this exist -- Matador did a good job with mastering it for CD, and the outtakes from the session are good and interesting. It helped my husband to really know what to expect on the accompanying reunion tour that I dragged him to.("these guys slipped under my radar back then") -- even before the Syd Barrett cover he mumbled to himself "well these guys obviously listened to a lot of Early Floyd". Other reviewers are right: the 'boathouse sessions' included are of interest only to die-hard fans (like me), but given the price, that second CD is like you're getting it free anyway. But the album itself is wonderful, and it's nice to finally have a well-mastered, affordable CD version so I can take my robyn-autographed vinyl copy and put it in cold storage! Lyrically: incredible lyrics, Robyn's trademark, and at this point, precise garage fare: bottled up relationship and sexual frustration, but too intelligenly done to just be a teenage "Damn I'm not getting any!" And like everybody who's reviewed so far said, everybody who bought this started a band. I did, because these are all songs I wish I'd written and still hope I could someday cover with some semblance of authenticity. It's that good.

This album is one of the greatest albums of all time. I'm not saying this just because I love it, but that it has had a huge influence on many, many bands, including R.E.M., the Replacements, the Flaming Lips, and Camper van Beethoven. It's earned the pseudonym, "The album that launched a thousand bands," and this holds ups in every way. Every track is solid, with the band effortlessly combining Byrdsian guitars with Syd Barret-like psychedelic sounds, as well as playing with their own unique, sophisticated, and often comical (yet serious) style. The nine bonus tracks added to the original ten on disc one are excellent in their own right. The supplement is fantastic. It captures the Boys in their essence, and although same are quite raw, they still manage to entertain greatly. I have a previous copy of the CD on the Glass Fish label, but the Matador one outshines it in everyway. The liner notes, for one thing, are absolutely fantastic. Their complete and loaded, containing a biography written by a Rolling Stone critic that is around twenty pages long. There are also several photos, sketches and drawings, gig posters, and various other pictures. If you become interested in this phenomenal band, I also reccomend their previous releasings: Can of Bees and Invisible Hits to be specific (although you can't go wrong with any of their material). Underwater Moonlight, though, is their definitive album. If you decide to buy this record, you won't be dissapointed. An excellent record in its own time and twenty-one years later.

I recently heard the Soft Boys' Underwater Moonlight for the first time, and all I have to say is this: why have I never heard this before? Who has been keeping this from me? It must be some sort of conspiracy!

This music is actually hard to describe. Take some old assorted records from the Beatles, the Byrds, the Kinks, Bob Dylan (electric mid-60's Bob), Pink Floyd / Syd Barrett, David Bowie, Big Star, the Bonzo Dog Band, Frank Zappa & the Mothers of Invention and Captain Beefheart, put them all in a blender and push the "Puree" button and garnish with crushed bits of the Velvet Underground, Fairport Convention and Steeleye Span, and you might get something like this album. But then again, maybe not.

The warped songwriting and humorous delivery of Robyn Hitchcock and the stunning elegant guitar work of Kimberley Rew both stand out here, but the band as a whole is also very tight. All in all, a very enjoyable experience. (Also, check out the Soft Boys' earlier album Can of Bees.)