Archives for March 2022

Certain Songs #2331: The Soft Boys – “Queen of Eyes”

March 31, 2022 by Jim Connelly

Album: Underwater Moonlight
Year: 1980

. . .

And so Underwater Moonlight went through a slew of great songs, including three that I very much almost wrote about: the footstomping “Positive Vibrations” with its insane guitar hook, sitar solo and amazing coda; “Insanely Jealous” which featured not one, but two rave-ups without getting faster, and the instrumental with the inside-out guitars, “You’ll Have to Go Sideways.”

All of which are great, but just set up the final two songs, the first of which is the insanely gorgeous “Queen of Eyes,” the first of Robyn Hitchcock’s power-pop songs for the ages. “Queen of Eyes” opens with Hitchcock’s and Kimberly Rew’s guitars in an quantum entanglement sent straight from psychedelic heaven, and a song that is on the short list of Prettiest Songs Ever Recorded, Psychedelic Power Pop Division.

Certain Songs #2330: The Soft Boys – “Kingdom of Love”

March 30, 2022 by Jim Connelly

Album: Underwater Moonlight
Year: 1980

. . .

All things considered, “Kingdom of Love” is far more representative of the charms of Underwater Moonlight — and Robyn Hitchcock’s music in general — than “I Wanna Destroy You.” A mid-tempo choogle with surreal lyrics and some utterly great guitar playing, “Kingdom of Love” also keeps the quality level way high.

It starts with Robyn’s guitar playing choppy rhythm in one speaker with Kimberley Rew supporting in the other while Matthew Seligman plays some aggressively hooky bass, over which Hitchcock quietly sings.

Certain Songs #2329: The Soft Boys – “I Wanna Destroy You”

March 29, 2022 by Jim Connelly

Album: Underwater Moonlight
Year: 1980

. . .

I wish I could remember exactly how I came to buy Underwater Moonlight. Or for that matter, when it was. I always like to think that it was sometime in the early 80s, but it might not have been until early 1984, and it might have been spurred by the entry in the Trouser Press Guide to New Wave Records, which called Underwater Moonlight “one of the new wave’s finest half-dozen albums”

In any event, I bought an import version of it at Tower Records and put on track one side one and was instantly blown away, as “I Wanna Destroy You” is one of the greatest album openers ever.

Certain Songs #2323: Soccer Mommy – “Lucy”

March 23, 2022 by Jim Connelly

Album: Color Theory
Year: 2020

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On Feburary 28, 2020, Soccer Mommy released the follow-up to 2018’s Clean, which was called Color Theory. This was literally the last possible time to release an album for at least the next two years (and, sigh, counting) and not have it affected in some way by the pandemic.

And in a weird way, that wasn’t even true, at least for me: working from home for these last two years (and, yay! counting) has meant that I didn’t have to listen to music through headphones, as I’d had to do for several years prior. (Except for that glorious glorious period at WME when I had my own office overlooking Sunset Blvd in Beverly Hills, which now seems like a weird dream.)

Certain Songs #2322: Soccer Mommy – “Cool”

March 22, 2022 by Jim Connelly

Album: Clean
Year: 2018

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Near the end of the last decade, there was a microtrend of young female artists who got noticed by writing “songs” based around “guitars.” Some of them, like Courtney Barnett, made music under their own names, others like Sophie Allison, recorded under band names, in her case, “Soccer Mommy,” a phrase that is older than she is. But, intentionally or not, ties her back to the 90s, when that was a new term.

That said, the second single from her 2018 breakthrough, Clean, deals with a subject as old as time, open admiration of the cool girl over there. Yeah, that one.