Underwater Moonlight

I can remember buying this album for two reasons...1. Because I thought the band name was cool and 2. Because the cover spooked me so much! I couldn't work out if they were people in masks or shop window dummies. Is that a picnic basket behind them? Why are they having a picnic on those grim and foreboding rocks? In my young mind it had the same quality as some out take from an unseen episode of Doctor Who. If the cover shitted me up, I thought the music in side had to be worth hearing, and I wasn't wrong.

I'd heard of Robyn HItchcock, and his Syd Barrett obsession, but I had no preconceived ideas about what lay inside the spine chilling cover. It's a great great album! The opening track "I Wanna Destroy You" comes on like Television, but the vocals and harmonies are transcendent.  "Kingdom of Love" with it's huge reverb is about as un late '70's as you can get. "I got the Hots" with it's strange off key crooning is pure class.The title track should've been a massive world wide hit, with it's infectious disco funk bass, clashing psych guitars and backing vocals that soar into the stratosphere! The lyrics throughout are surreal and obscure but never try hard (unlike say; Julian "I'm so weird man"Cope).

I could go on...suffice to say, it's a lost classic in terms of the mainstream which should've been massive. The Soft Boys should be a household name along side the likes of XTC.  Oh yeah... that cover still gives me the fear. Genius.