Underwater Moonlight...And How It Got There

Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
The Soft Boys' hugely influential 1980 neopsychedelic album Underwater Moonlight receives full archeological treatment on this double-CD 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. --Rickey Wright --This text refers to the Audio CD edition.

Album Description
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 Ryko one-CD set, the Matador version adds a second disc with the rehearsal sessions illustrating the creation of this landmark recording. The second disc 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. Slimline double jewel case. 2001 release. --This text refers to the Audio CD edition.

Tracks:

I Wanna Destroy You
Kingdom Of Love
Positive Vibrations
I Got The Hots
Insanely Jealous
Tonight
You'll Have To Go Sideways
Old Pervert
The Queen Of Eyes
Underwater Moonlight
He's A Reptile
Vegetable Man
Strange
Only The Stones Remain
Where Are The Prawns?
Dreams
Black Snake Diamond Rock
There's Nobody Like You
Song #4

Amazon.com

The Soft Boys' hugely influential 1980 neopsychedelic album Underwater Moonlight receives full archeological treatment on this double-CD 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. --Rickey Wright

Album Description

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 Ryko one-CD set, the Matador version adds a second disc with the rehearsal sessions illustrating the creation of this landmark recording. The second disc 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. Slimline double jewel case. 2001 release.

Customer Reviews:

Superb.......2006-08-04

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.

Another great rock album from the 80's - chances are most people will love this!.......2006-01-12

Like The Smiths' "The Queen Is Dead" and The Replacements' "Let It Be", The Soft Boys' "Underwater Moonlight . . . And How It Got There" is another great college rock album from the 80's (1980) that I'm confident most people will love! Every song here is great and absolutely fun to listen to. Singer Robyn Hitchcock does an excellent job with the vocals, and I'm pretty sure that most people will love him - he definitely fits the music. The lyrics are easy to make out here and are always fun, catchy and interesting to listen to. The musicianship is dated sounding, but in a good way - you can tell this was made in 1980. As for it's style, it's essentially 80's college rock. Regardless of this it sounds fantastic anyway, and I'm sure it's style will be appealing to most people. The production here is pretty good, but I think it may be ready for an ice remastering. Overall, if you like rock music at all, there's no way you won't love The Soft Boys' "Underwater Moonlight . . . And How It Got There". Absolutely recommended!

Highlights include:
the entire album

AHHHHHH!! So Awesome!!!.......2005-08-09

Why didn't these guys have commercial success?!? These songs are fantastically humorous and witty, not to mention well sung/written/played. There is not one bad song on this entire album; they're all wonderfully odd and eccentric. It's outstanding. I’m just in such awe at the fact that this album isn’t even in any of my local CD stores; in fact there are no Soft Boys’ CDs in my local stores. The only place you can find these guys is on record, so thank god for Ebay! This band is so unique it’s very hard to categorize them or even compare them to anybody. Robyn Hitchcock has a Lou Reedish quality about him, however he can sing much better, the harmonies on this album are just plain awesome. The guitar playing is also quite outlandish, the songs float all over the place, but that’s what makes it all so great. PURCHASE THIS!

A great classic gets the Rolls Royce treatment.......2004-01-30

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 and underground.......2002-05-19

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.

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