Because all I really want is for everybody to like the same stuff I like, I’ve decided to post download links for a few of my favorite records. First up is Underwater Moonlight by The Soft Boys, a band fronted by Robyn Hitchcock, an idiosyncratic Syd Barrett worshipper, and featuring Kimberly Rew, who later made his millions playing guitar in Katrina and the Waves.

Before UM, they’d already recorded an album called Can of Bees, but the band you hear on that record is practically unrecognizable here. The arrangements are unnecessarily busy and flashy, the songs a trifle too goofy and glib, and the bass playing, while competent, definitely smells a bit too much like Primus to my ears. It’s a good record with a handful of great songs, but Underwater Moonlight still comes as a bit of a shock.

There, the arrangements are scaled back and the songs have more focus than Hitchcock had previously managed. On Can of Bees, the songs are laden with schoolboyish show-offy jokes and smarm. I’d bet that Hitchcock owes his hot streak on UM to getting dumped. The wordplay’s intact, but the metaphors circle around something definite for a change: hate, jealousy, horniness, loneliness. In other words, the Dude Rock universals (and the bread and butter of pop songwriting).

Not to mention that the band sounds fucking amazing, the recording is beautifully executed mid-fi, and Hitchcock is one of rock’s great uncelebrated “bad” singers.

I’ll keep posting these Invisible Hits columns until I run out of records I love. I also have another little compilation coming down the pike. The records I post may well be stuff you all know already, but please, bear with me. As with most stuff on the internet, I’m frankly doing this more for my own sake than anybody else’s.

PS - Click the title to go to the link.