The Soft Boys: Underwater Moonlight : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

In this era of nonstop rock lists, the term "classic" is almost as overused as "genius" and "influential." But 1980's Underwater Moonlight remains all three of those descriptions. Over the last two decades, you could clearly hear the album's mark on bands ranging from R.E.M. and the Replacements to the Stone Roses and the Pixies. Aside from giving the musical world Robyn Hitchcock and the Egyptians, "Walking on Sunshine" composer Kimberly Rew and one of rock's great existential lines ("The damage that we do is so powerfully strong/They call it love/And the damage that we do, it just goes on and on and on/Not long enough"), Underwater Moonlight offers modern listeners some great, great rock songs. This new reissue (which sounds terrific) features all the outtakes on Ryko's 1992 version, as well as an entire disc of outtakes, live tracks and works-in-progress. Essential stuff for fans of this recently reunited, now-legendary, proto-Britpop group.

(BILL HOLDSHIP)