Underwater Moonlight (1980)

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.

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 made on 4-track 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.

Music

Garrett Martin of Paste Magazine explained: "Today it’s hard to understand how the lightly psychedelic pop-rock of the Soft Boys was ever considered anything close to punk. Frontman Robyn Hitchcock is basically just Elvis Costello without the need to appear at every all-star jam."

Critical 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. Melody Maker reviewed the album when it returned, with Paul Tickell praising the production but saying "the impact wears off once you get used to the novelty of a band not so much capturing a fully-blown late Sixties psychedelia, as searching for the moment when mid-Sixties bands were teetering on its mushrooming brink". Tickell said the best tracks were the ones that felt most contemporary, but concluded, "By the end of Underwater Moonlight you're left with the feeling of some good ideas and songs blighted. The Soft Boys have yet to sort out the points where excess and mannerism ruin rock 'n' roll and where they enhance it."

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". Music Week described the record as "a fine second album", saying "Crossing over from the late Sixties-orientated rock in the vein of Syd Barrett and sometimes Lou Reed to the British new wave, their music is slightly avant garde, yet flows well".

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. In 2016, Garrett Martin of Paste said, "Underwater Moonlight sounds like the best bar band in the world playing hits from a world that's better than our own. 'I Wanna Destroy You' and 'Queen of Eyes', especially, should be radio staples." It is included in Robert Dimery's 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.