If you had asked Robyn Hitchcock of the Soft Boys to cite his influences upon the release of second album Underwater Moonlight, he would probably have looked you in the eye and said, "The Beatles, Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd, some Byrds, maybe ..."
It was 1980, and in Britain post-punk and New Wave acts were establishing a commercial foothold. It would have been the wrong thing to say.
The album much later broke free from the sarcophagus of uncoolness that encased it, rising to the surface in safer times.
Those who once blanched at its references to the great bands of the late '60s that oversaw the merging of the most compelling elements of pop and rock, now lauded the purity of its three-part vocal harmonies, the succinctness of its attack and the thrilling interplay between the band's two guitarists, Hitchcock and Kimberley Rew.
Given that Hitchcock's heroes stand so boldly beside him, the album's greatest achievement is the strength of its own identity.
While there is much of Barrett in Hitchcock's delivery, he is very much his own man when it comes to what he has to say about romance and the human condition.
The very first line is a venom-tipped arrow dipped in honey: "I wanna destroy you," bursts forth in glorious harmony amid jangling guitars, instantly turning the notion of a pop song on its head. Kingdom Of Love follows up by likening love to eggs buried under the skin, before the first of the album's many phenomenally inventive guitar figures lifts the song off the ground.
The effect is dazzling, unsettling and rapture-inducing.
Hitchcock's cynicism and surrealism give you plenty to mull over as the album shifts through its changing moods, but it's best to surrender to the eccentricity of it all.
You might be left wondering at the vagaries of fashion that prevented this far-reaching psych-pop gem from being a huge hit.
