THE SOFT BOYS
Nextdoorland
Matador
· "Crudely speaking, I suppose Underwater Moonlight was more like Revolver, and this one’s more like the White Album" – Robyn Hitchcock at the Calgary Folk Music Festival, July 2002.
First, extinguish any discomforting notions you might harbour about reunion albums. Sure, 22 years is a long time between records, but with Nextdoorland, the Soft Boys have taken up right where they left off with their 1980 debut Underwater Moonlight.
Just as that record shone in its sprawling, unpredictable combination of jarring guitar and absurdist lyrics, Nextdoorland continues in a stuttering, liberal fling. Madcap leader Robyn Hitchcock is still able to weird us out and savant guitarist Kimberly Rew shows just how much one man can roam in a short pop song.
While listeners may notice some familiar snippets that recall the sitar freak-outs of "Positive Vibrations" or the leazy audio dribble of "Old Pervert," manipulated in subtle yet arresting ways, the boys never rely on self-referentiality to make things interesting.
Frantically attempting to make up for so much lost time and still revolving somewhere around the "Beatle-tree," as Hitchcock has called it, The Soft Boys have certainly planted their own seeds of twitchy complacency in the frolic along the way.
|
