THE SOFT BOYS - UNDERWATER MOONLIGHT & HOW IT GOT THERE RARE 150 GRAM 3 LP SET

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THE SOFT BOYS - UNDERWATER MOONLIGHT & HOW IT GOT THERE - Out of Print  AUDIOPHILE LIMITED EDITION 150 GRRAM HEAVY VIRGIN VINYL 2001 MATADOR RECORDS 3 LP PRESSINGS.

OUR LAST COPY FOREVER  

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The nicest thing you can do for your stylus and your ears. 

 You should never pass up the opportunity to upgrade your collection. They're each very limited in their pressings and disappear with extraordinary quickness from the vinyl market. This causes prices to skyrocket because once they are gone, they are gone forever! Don't second-guess yourself with this chance to upgrade your collection because before you know it, the opportunity will have passed forever.

The nicest thing you can do for your stylus and your ears. The ultimate record -- the way music was meant to be heard.

The definitive reissue of one of the most essential records of the last three decades. In addition to the original 1980 album and the extra tracks featured on the long out-of-print  3 LP set, the Matador version adds a second PORTION with the rehearsal sessions illustrating the creation of this landmark recording. THIS PORTION is entitled...And How It Got There consisting of previously unreleased rehearsal recordings from 1979. Featuring the Soft Boys' best loved lineup of Robyn Hitchcock, Kimberly Rew, Morris Windsor and Matthew Seligman. 2001 release.

The Soft Boys' hugely influential 1980 neopsychedelic album Underwater Moonlight receives full archeological treatment on this 3 LP SET set. Whether you consider it singer-songwriter ROBYN HITCHCOCK'S finest work or not, the cohesive, original whole it makes of roots ranging from the BYRDS to CLEAR SPOT remains dazzling. The drive and wit of earlier recordings here strains at a tightened leash that the Cambridge, England, quartet has a full grasp on. The LP's 10 tracks leap from the punkish anger of "I Wanna Destroy You" to the threatening crawl of "I Got the Hots," the angelically anthemic "Tonight," and Hitchcock's singular spin on the Beefheart-drenched blues of "Old Pervert" ("I won't do you no harm, I just wanna show you what's in my fridge/So come on, little girl, is your name Hester or maybe it's Midge?"). Nine exemplary bonus tracks, including an early Hitchcock seafood meditation "Where Are the Prawns?" and the raging metaphysical English-history tribute "Only the Stones Remain," complete the first disc. The second consists of nearly an hour of vintage lo-fi rehearsal tapes that will ultimately prove essential only to hardcore fans. With Moonlight too long out of print, though, this is a reissue to prize.

 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.

Track Listings

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