1991
Rockin' With Robyn
As Robyn Hitchcock Gets Older, Robyn Hitchcock Gets Better
Coming Soon To A Radio Near You?
by Johan Kugelberg
Robyn Hitchcock is back with a new album called Perspex Island, proving that a Rock musician can grow old gracefully. Regarding himself more as a songwriter than a comme il faut Rock 'n' Roll-er, Hitchcock has moved far from the days of his Soft Boys when perfect Pop songs were executed onstage by a louder-than-god Rock 'n' Roll band.
The past decade saw a slew of Hitchcock solo albums. Among them two diametrically opposite all-acoustic releases, 1984's I Often Dream Of Trains and 1990's Eye. Where the former is about death and the latter is about life in transition, both discs speak of emotion in a way that makes you reutrn to them over and over. His electric records have also made him a critics' favorite and given him a horde of almost frighteningly loyal fans. This year we find a man who might be politely knocking on the door of record-buying middle America. Longtime fans and friends R.E.M. have become household names, so why not Hitchcock?
The Robyn Hitchcock of today isn't the Barrettesque madcap master of the endless psychedelic monologue he used to be. He's tuned it down a little and comes across more like that English teacher you really dug in college who'd keep you spellbound with stories while he handed you your 400-page summer assignment. Hitchcock has some really wise things to say about himself, life, and the craft of songwriting:
"For a long time I would rather have been Syd Barrett or Bob Dylan than me. It's taken about half my life to actually stagger late accepting being Robyn Hitchcock. My aim now is to write songs that have emotion. But then the problem of language comes in. I think we all speak different languages. Robert Johnson influenced people like The Stones and Zeppelin, but the fans of those bands wouldn't necessarily understand Johnson. Similarly, you might hear a piece of Tibetan music that is breathtaking when you get to know it, but at first it'll just sound like static. There is no given emotional language (except maybe babies howling or sexual grunts)."
Hitchcock's new Perspex Island (Perspex being a plexiglass-like product in the UK) is basic where 1989's Queen Elvis was baroque:
"The record is a very human record. I tried to avoid using unearthly powers (except for the producer). It's probably a pretty fair representation of Robyn Hitchcock And The Egyptians since we didn't have to sit around and balance ourselves out. Paul Fox did that as the producer. On record we were never a Rock band before. It was more like us drawing a diagram for you to color in yourself. We did a lot of rehearsals on this one to keep it from sounding like a blueprint."
As a lyricist, Hitchcock has created a niche of his own in the world of Rock, being gifted with the verbal and imaginative equivalent of an epileptic fit. His live gigs have been attended as much for the music as for the extended banter between songs, and his lyrics have covered some exhaustingly bizarre topics. But according to Hitchcock, he's moving away from some of the weirdness. "This one has fewer defense mechanisms than the others," he says. "I don't fly away into Robyn The Crazy Limey Eccentric. Some people love it when I do that and some people don't, but I don't really fly away on this one. It's more emotional. I can see this being the album that replaces Fleetwood Mac's Rumours as the one that everyone has lying around in their station-wagon casette player."
Let's do it. And after we've replaced Rumours with the new Robyn Hitchcock album, let's go on. Replace Steppenwolf with Urge Overkill, Pink Floyd with Spaceman 3, and James Taylor with Mark Eitzel. Who needs Classic Rock anyway?
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