- Source: Underwater Moonlight
Underwater Moonlight is the second studio album by English rock band the Soft Boys, released in June 1980 by record label Armageddon. The album received little critical notice and was a commercial failure, and the band split up a few months after its release. However, Underwater Moonlight has retrospectively been viewed as a psychedelic classic, influential on the development of the neo-psychedelia music genre and on a number of bands, especially R.E.M. It is included in Robert Dimery's 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.
Recording
The album was recorded in June 1979 at Spaceward Studios in Cambridge, and between January and June 1980 at the Alaska and James Morgan studios in London. The London sessions were produced by Pat Collier, while the Cambridge sessions were produced by Spaceward Studios staff. The recordings were done on 4- and 8-track, and only cost £600.
Release
Underwater Moonlight was released in June 1980 by Armageddon Records.
The album was initially unsuccessful commercially, especially in the United Kingdom, where over half the sales were exports to America.
Reception
Underwater Moonlight's release in June 1980 coincided with a printers' strike in the UK that halted production of IPC Media's magazines, including NME and Melody Maker, for six weeks until July. Consequently, there were few contemporary reviews of the album in the UK. In the short-lived music magazine New Music News, Mark Ellen gave an enthusiastic review of the album, describing it as "another headlong plunge into the acid-rock grotesque" and the lyrics as "another gonzo Bosch landscape". Ellen said that the band "raze the whole apparatus of rock 'n' roll and cultivate weeds round the foundations. They juggle with its time signatures, and – when the going gets straight – they throttle it with dischords", concluding that they "compound something fiercely mutant but still funny (very), easy to absorb, commercial (yes!), and a lot less elite and sarcastic than you might be led to believe" and that the album "has more than flashes of brilliance".
Legacy reviews have overwhelmingly praised the album. Reviewing the 1990 reissue on Glass Fish Records, Henry Williams of Q gave the record four stars out of five and called it "one of the period's best, if unsung, albums". Reviewing the 2001 expanded version Underwater Moonlight... And How It Got There for the same magazine, Martin Aston said that it was "suave and sparkly, essentially the template for '80s college rock". Bill Holdship of Rolling Stone, in his 2001 review, wrote that the album "offers modern listeners some great, great rock songs". In his retrospective review, Stephen Thomas Erlewine, writing for AllMusic, felt that the music on the album showed the influence of the Beatles, the Byrds and Syd Barrett.
Legacy
Whilst commercially unsuccessful originally, Underwater Moonlight has gone on to be viewed as a one-off psychedelic classic. Matt LeMay of Pitchfork, in a 2010 review, felt that the album was commercially unsuccessful because the timing was wrong: at the time of its release, audiences had little interest in "music that incorporated the indelible harmonies of the Byrds and the surrealism of Syd Barrett", but that anyhow the album is "best considered with the benefit of hindsight, and for all the famous music it inspired, there is still nothing quite like Underwater Moonlight". In 2001, Bill Holdship of Rolling Stone wrote that the album's influences could be detected "on bands ranging from R.E.M. and the Replacements to the Stone Roses and the Pixies". According to Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic, Underwater Moonlight "influenced the jangle pop of R.E.M. and other underground pop of the 1980s."
Track listing
All the tracks on this disc were taken from rehearsal recordings.
Personnel
Credits adapted from the 2001 Matador reissue liner notes.
The Soft Boys
Robyn Hitchcock – guitar, vocals, rhythm bass (5)
Kimberley Rew – guitar, vocals, bass (7), synthesiser (7)
Matthew Seligman – bass
Morris Windsor – drums, vocals
Additional personnel
Gerry Hale – violin (5, 10)
Andy King – sitar (3)
Technical personnel
Pat Collier – production (1–3, 5, 6, 8–10, 12–18), engineering (1, 8, 12–18)
James Morgan – engineering (2, 3, 5, 6, 9, 10)
Mike Kemp – production, engineering (4, 7, 11, 19)
The Soft Boys – production (4, 7, 11, 19)
Production notes
Disc 1: tracks 4, 7, 11, 19 recorded June 1979 at Spaceward Studios, Cambridge; all other tracks, except track 14, recorded January–June 1980 at Alaska and James Morgan studios, London; track 14 recorded July 1980 at Alaska, London
Disc 2: rehearsals taped on a boombox or recorded on a two-track machine at the Cambridge Rowing Club Boathouse, September 1979–July 1980
References
External links
Underwater Moonlight (Adobe Flash) at Radio3Net (streamed copy where licensed)
Underwater Moonlight at Discogs (list of releases)