From: mrosen@nyx.cs.du.edu (Michael Rosen)
Newsgroups: rec.music.info
Subject: RELEASE: Soft Boys on Rykodisc (article)
Date: 5 Oct 92 08:14:20 GMT
Reply-To: mrosen@nyx.cs.du.edu
Followup-To: rec.music.misc
Organization: University of Denver, Dept. of Math & Comp. Sci.
Originator: recmusic@galaxy

Washington City Paper 10/2/92 p. 29

Invisible Misses
By Mark Jenkins

A Can of Bees
Underwater Moonlight
Invisible Hits

The Soft Boys
Rykodisc

A decade later, the Soft Boys are reputed to have presaged another
psychedelic out-break.  Certainly Robyn Hitchcock's nonsense lyrics were
contrary to the "London's Burning" spirit of other bands of the period,
yet the extant early recordings of the Boys sound neither anachronistic
nor prescient.  The bluesy attack of A Can of Bees and Invisible Hits is
not so far removed from pub rock, and it's significant that the Boys
were actually signed to Radar, Dave Robinson's brief-lived successor to
pub-rock mother lode Stiff.  (The Radar album was never released;
according to the anonymous liner notes to this edition of Bees,
presumably penned by Hitchcock, it was "too bad" to see the light of
day.)

Though they were once widely available in import bins, Bees, Hits, and
Underwater Moonlight have never been issued in the U.S.  The new
Rykodisc versions not only make the Boys' output (most of it) official,
they also add bonus tracks -- some rare, some never-before-heard, some
just picked up from Two Halves From the Price of One, the half-live
album that's not joining the other three in the Ryko catalog.

Syd Barrett and John Lennon are the two figures in the Hitchcock trinity
most obvious on the two CDs of earlier material; Bees even contains a
steely rendition of "Cold Turkey."  Yet most of these songs are rooted
in mid-'60s British blues rock; Hits' "Rock 'n' Roll Toilet" could be
one of those rude Jagger/Richard songs they knocked off to get out of
their songwriting contract.  A lot of these tracks are notable
principally for their titles, which include such antic Hitchcockiana as
"Wading Through a Ventilator," "Have a Heart, Betty (I'm Not
Fireproof)," and "Sandra's Having Her Brain Out."

The Byrds/Fairport Convention jangle that launched a thousand post-punk
bands (via Soft Boys acolytes R.E.M.) doesn't become a major factor
until Moonlight, the only Boys album the non-fanatic need own.  Ryko
didn't include "Bells of Rhymney" among the Two Halves tracks it added
as bonuses to Moonlight, but the influence is nonetheless clear.  Such
tuneful songs as "I Wanna Destroy You," "Kingdom of Love," "Queen of
Eyes," and "Positive Vibrations" (which features a sitar) announce the
recipe that's sustained Hitchcock nearly ever since: existential and/or
romantic dread wrapped in chiming rhythm guitar and sweet melodies and
harmonies.

Moonlight is the first Boys album to credit a producer (Pat Collier,
later the patron studio saint of shamblers and neopunks), and the
elaborately phased and multi-tracked disc is clearly the most produced
of the lot.  The songs are more focused too, and Hitchcock's communiques
of love and hate finally put his self-consciously zany language to
effective use: "You won't have a single atom left to call your own," he
memorably vows on "Destroy," while "Kingdom"'s metaphors of love and
reproduction -- "You've been laying eggs beneath my skin" -- are some of
the most pungent this side of Eraserhead.

The notes to Bees list the alleged lineup of the Boys' never-released
second album (the Radar one), and the songs include not only "I Wanna Go
Backwards" (reborn as Moonlight's "You'll Have to Go Sideways"?) but
also "So You Think You're in Love," the shouldabeen hit single from
Hitchcock's latest album, Perspex Island.  Hitchcock, who with his
Egyptians has replicated the lineup of the early, pre-Kimberly Rew Soft
Boys, is still polishing the jagged edges of that 15-year-old can of
bees.  Psychedelia may not be a permanent condition, but it should last
as long as Hitchcock, and maybe even as long as the obscure master tapes
in Columbia's vaults.



--
Michael Rosen						"Beer - It does
Tau Epsilon Phi - George Washington University		 a body good."
mrosen@nyx.cs.du.edu
Michael.Rosen@bbs.oit.unc.edu or @lambada.oit.unc.edu
Newsgroups: rec.music.info