The Soft Boys- Underwater Moonlight...And How It Got There (1980) Expanded Edition (Bonus Disc) MP3 & FLAC -For sradams777-

"In the primitive jungle of love, it's funny what you're capable of."

The Soft Boys' debut, A Can of Bees, is the sound of a band joyously sneering in the face of both commercial and creative expectations. Wedding Power-Pop and neo-psychedelia to the aesthetic minimalism of the Post-Punk movement then in full-swing, The Soft Boys were simultaneously anachronistic and visionary, yet sublimely unconcerned with (or blissfully unaware of) the implications of either. While their debut consistently refracted their Jangle-Pop tendencies through the twin-prisms of a cheeky brand of experimentalism and a blunt Punk sensibility, their follow-up and criminally under-appreciated masterpiece, Underwater Moonlight, refines these to some degree and, in the process, clearly sketched the blueprint for the countless neo-psych bands that would spring up in the years to come. It has been famously said of The Velvet Underground's debut that only a thousand people initially bought the album and every one of them ended up starting a band; something similar could also be said of Underwater Moonlight without any fear of lapsing into exaggeration.  On the opening track, "I Wanna Destroy You," The Soft Boys' create a unique hybrid sound that can best be described as "jangle-punk"; contrasting Robyn Hitchcock's biting lyrics, such as "They feed your pride with boredom and they lead you on to war," with irresistible pop-song hooks and harmonized choruses, it's hard to imagine how profoundly unprecedented this song must have sounded in 1980. The next song, "Kingdom of Love," is a stunner; presaging the jagged Funk of Solid Gold-era Gang of Four, while also managing to integrate Nuggets-style Garage-Rock with a liberal dose of Syd Barrett added in for good measure, the song is easily one of Hitchcock's finest as a Soft Boy. Perhaps the most obvious influence on bands such as R.E.M. and The Three O'Clock is "Queen of Eyes," a marvelous piece of Byrds-inspired Jangle-Pop that is one of the best examples of neo-psychedelia I have ever come across. To say that Underwater Moonlight is one of the most influential albums of the Post-Punk era is both an understatement and an irony given The Soft Boys' decidedly un-Post-Punk tendency to overtly incorporate sixties-era influences into their sound. While at the time, this approach cost them any hope of commercial or critical success in response to their albums, it is hard to imagine the Athens and Paisley underground music scenes growing to prominence in the early eighties without the influence of The Soft Boys' groundbreaking work.

The Soft Boys- A Can of Bees (1979) / Invisible Hits (1983) MP3 & FLAC

"And darkness is the shore of light, the truth is framed with lies. And a girl can smile sweetly though her mouth is stuffed with flies."

The Soft Boys, originally formed as Dennis and The Experts at the height of the U.K. Punk movement, were a band seemingly constructed out of contrarian tendencies, for, quite of of step with the musical zeitgeist of the late seventies, they dressed their brand of Post-Punk in the kind of late-sixties psych-rock and Brit-Rock signifiers that were anathema to the "three chords or less" minimalism then in vogue. What wasn't so obvious at the time of the release of their debut, A Can of Bees, was that Psychedelic revivalism would blossom just a few years later in the U.K., U.S. (most notably in Athens, GA. and Los Angeles, CA.), New Zealand, and Australia. As such, there can be little doubt that The Soft Boys played a major role in connecting the dots between Post-Punk and neo-psychedelia; as head Soft Boy Robyn Hitchcock has noted, "Big Star and us were the rickety bridge between The Byrds and R.E.M."  Hitchcock's "rickety bridge" metaphor is both apt and a little modest. Apt because while neither band had any commercial success (though in Big Star's case, this was largely due to poor promotion), they both exerted a huge influence on the musicians who peopled the early-eighties psyche-rock resurgence. Modest because both bands demand to be heard on their own terms, as their music, in and of itself, is just as distinctive and influential as the music that inspired them. In the case of A Can of Bees, this is a sound as likely to indulge in the jagged abrasiveness of Post-Punk as it is the Jangle-Pop that would become more prominent on the band's second album and undisputed masterpiece, Underwater Moonlight. Opening with the bluesy swagger of "Give It to The Soft Boys," what stands out immediately is the dual guitar attack of Hitchcock and Kimberly Rew, which, while certainly echoing a band such as Television, seems to burn along according to its own slightly-skewed logic. The Soft Boys' unique intersection of influences is clearly on display in "Human Music," which reveals their Jangle-Pop roots, but passes this sound through a darker, dirtier, less polished prism that provides a perfect musical context for Hitchcock's Lou Reed-inspired vocals. R.E.M., were you listening? And then there's "Sandra's Having Her Brain Out," an unlikely but brilliant combination of Post-Punk cynicism and Beatlesque vocal harmonies. An album such as A Can of Bees couldn't have been more out of place in 1979, the same year Joy Division released their debut, Unknown Pleasures. And while The Soft Boys' debut garnered barely a murmur commercially, its influence continues to be felt thirty years later.

Robyn Hitchcock- "Devil's Radio" (2001) from Storefront Hitchcock

Here's a warm-up for some Soft Boys just around the corner: