Though England's The Soft Boys weren't a hugely popular band when they first made records in the late 1970s, their jangly, psychedelic rock songs stood out among the punk that was considered the vanguard at the time. Eventually, they proved to be almost as influential, especially on 1980s guitar bands like R.E.M. and The Replacements.
Robyn Hitchcock, who sang and wrote most of The Soft Boys' songs, launched a solo career after the band broke up in 1981. Thanks to latent interest in his old band, especially in the United States where their albums remained staples on college radio, he garnered a following that was small but solid; a true cult that has stuck with him for 25 years.
The demands of the road and the mellowing of age have turned Hitchcock into a troubadour whose most recent projects include a double-CD of Bob Dylan covers and an album of originals recorded in Nashville with singer Gillian Welch and her partner David Rawlings, both of whom were fans of Hitchcock in their youth. But Hitchcock's Wildean English urbanity and penchant for the bizarre still hold sway. A man who once spent an entire concert literally trying to escape his shadow on stage is now more likely to deliver a dry comic monologue on his karmic similarities to Frank Sinatra, which is included on a new Japan-only compilation album, along with a spry version of Lipps Inc's R&B hit "Funkytown."