2000 Great Songs #1374: Only The Stones Remain

Here's our second outtake which belatedly saw the light on the Soft Boys' 1981 posthumous vinyl collection Two Halves For The Price Of One. (It was also released as a 1981 single and later showed up on CD reissues of 1980's final proper LP Underwater Moonlight.) "Only The Stones Remain" is Robyn Hitchcock and band at their most aggressive, fiery post-punk power pop with a thudding bass riff and slashing guitars all over the place, as Hitchcock relates tales of Stonehenge--a bit more convincingly than Spinal Tap. Although there's a touch of uncomfortable misogyny (as with some other Soft Boys tracks, albeit lyrically tweaked in later versions), it's more than compensated for by pure energy and colorful imagery.