Reception
The album was initially unsuccessful, especially in the UK, where over half the sales were exports to America; though it has gone on to be viewed as a one-off psychedelic classic, influential on the development of the neo-psychedelia music genre, and on a number of 80s bands, especially R.E.M.. Bill Holdship in a 2001 review in Rolling Stone commented that the album's influences could be detected "on bands ranging from R.E.M. and the Replacements to the Stone Roses and the Pixies", and that it "offers modern listeners some great, great rock songs".
Stephen Thomas Erlewine in a retrospective review for Allmusic felt that the music on the album showed the influence of the Beatles, the Byrds and Syd Barrett, and that in its turn it influenced the jangle pop of R.E.M. and other underground pop of the 1980s.
Matt LeMay in a 2010 review for Pitchfork felt that the album was unsuccessful on release in 1981 as the timing was wrong as audiences had little interest in "music that incorporated the indelible harmonies of the Byrds and the surrealism of Syd Barrett"; but that anyhow the album is "best considered with the benefit of hindsight, and for all the famous music it inspired, there is still nothing quite like Underwater Moonlight".
Read more about this topic: Underwater Moonlight
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“But in the reception of metaphysical formula, all depends, as regards their actual and ulterior result, on the pre-existent qualities of that soil of human nature into which they fall—the company they find already present there, on their admission into the house of thought.”
—Walter Pater (1839–1894)
“He’s leaving Germany by special request of the Nazi government. First he sends a dispatch about Danzig and how 10,000 German tourists are pouring into the city every day with butterfly nets in their hands and submachine guns in their knapsacks. They warn him right then. What does he do next? Goes to a reception at von Ribbentropf’s and keeps yelling for gefilte fish!”
—Billy Wilder (b. 1906)
“Aesthetic emotion puts man in a state favorable to the reception of erotic emotion.... Art is the accomplice of love. Take love away and there is no longer art.”
—Rémy De Gourmont (1858–1915)