The Soft Boys

The Soft Boys, Robyn Hitchcock's first band, famously imploded shortly after releasing their masterful second album, Underwater Moonlight (1980). The band has now become quasi-legendary, and are firmly a part of the current influence chain, despite their short history. The Soft Boys' melding of 60's psychedelia, lyrics with a literary bent, and a finely-honed sense of post-punk absurdity created a basic template that was expanded upon by everyone from R.E.M. to Pavement to Evan Dando, their sound influential to the point that Underwater Moonlight now sounds strangely contemporary and fresh. Influence has a funny way of doubling back on itself, and sounds can suddenly become new and current all over again, which is where the Soft Boys find themselves today. After a lavish double-disc re-release of Underwater Moonlight by Matador, the band went back on the road recently, playing a slew of shows and beginning to write material again.

One of the problems that the Soft Boys faced in 1980 was the tyrannical aesthetic of punk, and a band making songs called "(I Want to Be An) Anglepoise Lamp" didn't, for obvious reasons, fit into that sensibility. Variously reviled for being "middle-class" and pretentious, the Soft Boys were perceived by many to be either joking or full of shit. Time has vindicated the Soft Boys' efforts however, and the descendants of the Soft Boys continue to make vital music.

That said, however, it's difficult to know where the Soft Boys fit in these days. On the positive side, they weren't popular enough initially to have their new efforts viewed as nostalgic; on the negative, people seem to like their early-80s sounds delivered by skinny, young New Yorkers. The crucial distinction is that the Soft Boys aren't drawing from that era as an influence. It's their era.