Soft Boys reissuing ‘Underwater Moonlight,’ ‘A Can of Bees’ on CD, audiophile vinyl | slicing up eyeballs // 80s alternative music, college rock, indie

Soft Boys reissuing ‘Underwater Moonlight,’ ‘A Can of Bees’ on CD, audiophile vinyl | slicing up eyeballs // 80s alternative music, college rock, indie

The first two albums by Robyn Hitchcock’s late-’70s/early-’80s neo-psychedelic band The Soft Boys — 1979’s A Can of Bees and 1980’s classic Underwater Moonlight — will be reissued in stripped-down CD and audiophile vinyl editions that come with new download-only bonus tracks.

Both reissues are due out Oct. 19 on CD and 180-gram vinyl, and each will feature just the original album on the physical release, plus promo codes to download the full albums plus the all of the bonus tracks digitally, Yep Roc Records announced today.

The Soft Boys’ 11-track debut, A Can of Bees, is long out of print, and has not been reissued on CD since 1992 (a “new” copy of that disc currently is priced at $209 in Amazon.com’s marketplace) — and never has been reissued on vinyl. The reissue will be accompanied by eight bonus tracks, and they’re entirely different from the extra material on the ‘92 Rykodisc reissue (see full tracklists below).

As for Underwater Moonlight, the band’s sophomore album was reissued in a 2CD set in 2001. This new release includes the original 10-track album on CD and vinyl, plus 30 download-only bonus tracks, four of which were not on the 2001 reissue: “Wey Wey Hep Uh Hole,” “Empty Girl,” “Have a Heart Betty (Mark 2)” and “Rock ‘n’ Roll Toilet (Mark 2).”