Nextdoorland

Though the music of the Soft Boys was hopelessly out-of-step with the times in which it was created, it has aged beautifully. Their 1980 masterstroke Underwater Moonlight now seems colossal; its excellently crafted power-pop packed the wallop of a hundred-ton rig hitting a concrete wall at top speed, even with frontman Robyn Hitchcock's inventive, surrealist lyrics softening the crunch. That album, however, was recorded 22 years ago, and since then everything has changed. Hitchcock has achieved a much higher degree of public awareness with his solo career than the Soft Boys ever saw, and the other members of the quartet have pursued their own paths through two decades of changing music, often playing on each other's records and even occasionally writing together. So, in light of this, it hardly seems surprising that the band reformed last year to tour in support of Matador's expanded reissue of Underwater Moonlight, or that they entered a studio shortly afterward to record another full-length.

Surprise or not, to be skeptical about a project like this is only natural-- "reunion" albums routinely fall flat, and pretty much invariably pale in comparison to the band's past work. But while that second part rings true here, I'm thrilled to report that the first part doesn't. Nextdoorland finds the band's old chemistry in full effect, and Hitchcock's songwriting seems re-energized by the presence of his old mates. They waste no time proving it, either-- drummer Morris Windsor and bassist Matthew Seligman immediately lock together on the opener, "I Love Lucy", a mostly instrumental song that succeeds by the loopy guitar interplay of Hitchcock and Kimberley Rew.

Hitchcock begins the weirdly low-key "Pulse of My Heart" by claiming, "You can set your watch by me/ I'm a regular guy"-- and then goes out of his way to suggest otherwise over the course of the rest of the album. This is perhaps best evidenced on "My Mind Is Connected" when he sings, "My mind is connected to your dreams/ Bzzup uhzzup uzzup uzzuh bzzup uh-huh/ Your dreams are connected to the underside/ Where the skull of Africa meets the horn of Florida/ And petals ring in orbit, merry day/ Give me a pod of rock 'n' roll." Elsewhere, he gets surprisingly explicit on "Japanese Captain", intoning in a paradoxically chipper sneer for the lines, "Touch me, baby/ Rinse me, please/ Fuck me, darling/ Under the table is good, but under your fingers is better/ You know I'm in love." (Something tells me he didn't get the date.) And amidst all this, the band plays as a tight, focused unit, congealing into thick rhythm on "Protected Love" and entering extended freakouts along the way, as with the vaguely Middle Eastern coda to "Mr. Kennedy" and the raging tangents of the six-minute powerhouse "Strings".

The harmonies that shimmered so brightly on Underwater Moonlight are employed sparingly on Nextdoorland, spotlighting Hitchcock's Syd Barrett-influenced croon, which seems to suit this material best. Unfortunately, the absence of those harmonies also contributes to an overall lack of density, and this eventually proves the record's greatest weakness. But that doesn't strike me as a fault of the band's as much as producer Pat Collier's. Though responsible for producing Underwater Moonlight, he seem satisfied with a hollowed sound here, which weakens the punch of the group's older material-- and frankly, that punch was pretty essential to the whole hitting-a-concrete-wall-at-top-speed bit. The strength and conviction of the material is wonderful regardless, but I find it difficult not to wonder what might have been had they brought in New Pornographers producer David Carswell.

In the end, of course, what might have been is beside the point. What we have here is an inspired comeback from a band who are finally getting their due, two decades after the fact. That nothing on Nextdoorland hits quite as hard as "I Wanna Destroy You" or "Pigworker" isn't an indictment, nor a shock. But that most of the record manages to come so close after a 22-year hiatus is a serious achievement-- it deserves only commendation. Here's hoping the Boys don't quit again on us too soon, as this new evidence proves they've hardly run their course.