As a general rule, I’m highly suspicious of band reunions. Several years ago, when people were flipping with excitement about the prospect of the Pixies getting back together to play a few dates and maybe–but probably not!–record again, I was entirely unmoved and uninterested. Admittedly, that may stem in part from the fact that I wasn’t nearly as devoted a fan of the band as my college radio brethren during the Pixies’ heyday, but it was also because it was such a transparent attempt to cash in on past success by performers whose respective solo and spin-off careers had pretty well stalled. I was still (and remain, I suppose) enough of a believer in the mythic passion of rock ‘n’ roll that I found no appeal whatsoever in the thought of a bunch of middle-aged musicians who share nothing but a history and animosity standing together on a stage and perfunctorily going through songs they’d long ago chosen to abandon. That’s my starting mindset whenever the word “reunion” is evoked in the realm of music.

That offered, I’ve been proven wrong many times, especially in recent years as get-the-band-back-together efforts by the likes of Dinosaur Jr., Superchunk and the Feelies have yielded fine albums that need no injection of wistful nostalgia to boost their quality. And then there are those instances, rare as they may be, when I too am struck helpless by the prospect of a bygone band picking up their instruments once again. That brings me to Nextdoorland, the 2002 reunion album by the Soft Boys.

The Soft Boys was the late-seventies/just-into-the-eighties band that introduced the world to the beautifully unhinged musical stylings of Robyn Hitchcock. Only experiencing the most modest of success when they were originally plying their trade, retrospective admiration of the band’s warped cool and floridly unique psychedelic punk built up a small but intense cult following, especially from those who were seeking out a rawer version of the blissful, cryptic pop Hitchcock was sharing on his solo records. The old Soft Boys records were also hard to come by, making them even more valuable commodities.

By the beginning of the 21st century, there’s no question that part of Hitchcock’s motivation for reuniting the band was an uncertain footing in his own career. After a couple excellent but commercially underperforming albums for Warner Bros. Records, Hitchcock was without a label. He’d also spend a significant amount of the time in immediate prior years going through his archives for a series of reissues and compilations, which perhaps got the wheels turning about his former band. The fairly constant presence of former Soft Boys Morris Windsor and Andy Metcalfe in Hitchcock’s backing band the Egyptians insured that band couldn’t have been that far from his thoughts during most of the eighties and nineties. Metcalfe didn’t actually participate in the reunion, but they impressively got Kimberly Rew back into the fold considering he had to be busy rolling around in the piles of money he made for writing “Walking on Sunshine”.

Truth is, the resulting album largely sounded like the solo release that would otherwise have been expected from Hitchcock at the time. That may be why I liked it. If it didn’t necessarily seem like forward movement, it also didn’t grasp at a long-gone past. There was no fumbling to recreate the energy or sound of “I Wanna Destroy You,” the Soft Boys track that had undoubtedly gained the most prominence in the two decades since they’d last recorded together. From the album’s opening track, “I Love Lucy,” it was clear this would be a release with a purpose beyond fruitlessly trying to create an echo of the past. Of course, that may have contributed to Nextdoorland faring no better than that imagined Hitchcock solo record would have. The reunion was short-lived, with the band again splitting the very next year. That’s all right. The album didn’t hold the promise of masterpieces to come. It was simply a fine outing, entirely on its own terms.

The Soft Boys, “I Love Lucy”

(Disclaimer: Almost as if adhering to tradition, Nextdoorland appears to be out of print, just as the original albums were for many, many years. Therefore, this song is offered here with the understanding that it cannot be purchased in such a way that will provide due compensation to both the artist and the proprietor of your favorite local, independently-owned record store. I’m certainly not interested in plucking money from the pocket of Robyn Hitchcock. For example, I’d gladly pay twice the ticket price to see what he’s doing tomorrow. Regardless, if I’m asked to remove this track by someone with the due authority to make such a request, I will gladly comply.)