1988
Robyn Hitchcock
Globe Of Frogs
A&M
by John Wilde
It tickles me to think that Robyn Hitchcock, one of the last great English incapables, is on the nervous edge of mega-success in America with the early-Floyd totter of "Balloon Man". It justifies something for me. It revives our faith in the notion that anything really can happen, that life is a series of perpetual contradictions and preposterously unlikely stews at the best of times. Over here meanwhile, Hitchcock, to most, is the slightly odd one who used to be in The Soft Boys, a man who is either going too far or not far enough. He's either making Julian Cope look like Norman Tebbitt or he's slouching back into Pub Rock with a slight crinkle in the middle.
Globe Of Frogs brings him to a major record label after years in the wilderness. This development makes it no easier to estimate the size or shape of the Hitchcock lantern. His new LP makes himself no clearer. I hope his new record company are as thrilled as I am by this unastonishing revelation. Before you even get to the music though, there are signs that his imagination is heading towards a point that one might call "visionary" if one was feeling peculiarly generous. In a short sleeve essay entitled "Manifesto", he comes over all Kierkegaardian (one of those non-Pop types anyway), concluding very little indeed but suggesting that, if he is the prophet of chaos, then this is truly his age. "Perhaps I am the prophet of order," he wonders with (I hope) a wry chuckly, "recoiling in disgust from the controllable force of life."
Might Kierkegaard have hummed a better tune? This is the question my friends. Well, yes and no. "Balloon Man", "Chinese Bones" and "Flesh Number One (Beatle Dennis)" are still smart-aleck-y Hitchcock fermentations, but they are as close as he will ever get to vintage, dazzling, Psycho Pop. There's not enough of that to make Globe Of Frogs ultimately any more complete than any previous Hitchcock LP. Which is a shame. But it is typical of the man and his messy mind. Far too slovenly and misshapen to ever really count. Occassionally engrossing, as ever. I hope he makes it though. That would be hysterical.
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