This Week's Forgotten Gem of the '80s - the Soft Boys' "There's Nobody Like You"

There are a number of exhilaratingly strange elements to England's punk-era misfits the Soft Boys, not the least of which is the mind-blowing fact that the band's guitarist, Kimberley Rew, was later a member of Katrina & the Waves and the author of the adorably cheeky "Walking on Sunshine". Ahem... Anyway, while those of you for whom that's head-shaking news try to get over the loopy revelation, there's also the band's musical output itself, an odd, sophisticated blend of psychedelia, guitar pop and punk served up with witty, British verve. Leader Robyn Hitchcock has gone on to forge a fascinatingly off-kilter pop/rock career in the nearly three decades since the Soft Boys' brilliant 1980 release, Underwater Moonlight, but the work he did within this short-lived, landmark band really deserves all the attention it never gets.

"There's Nobody Like You" happens to be one of the group's most accessible offerings, fueled with a nice rock and roll shuffle, melodic, chiming guitars, and an inventive, wonderfully off-balance chorus. But minus most of Hitchcock's Syd Barrett-inspired, deliberate forays into the weird, this still represents the genuine article of what the Soft Boys had to offer: intellectually sound but never pretentious explorations of the whole history of rock and roll as it closed the book on its first quarter-century. This is fun, provocative stuff, even if the only thing the Soft Boys' music has in common with the concept of "walking on sunshine" is a relatively complete failure to make much literal sense.