Washington City Paper
August 23, 1991
Death Again
by Nicole Arthur
There are no references to fish on Robyn Hitchcock's latest album. All the
songs on Perspex Island are about death -- particularly the ones that appear to be about something else. This is not completely surprising from the
man who penned "The Pit Of Souls", "The Bones In The Ground", "My Wife And
My Dead Wife", and "Sounds Great When You're Dead" (and of whom the jaunty
little quatrain "Fried to death in seconds by the Russians/Or if you're lucky
just a sudden stroke/A lingering death from fallout as your hair and teeth
fall out/A certain death from cancer if you smoke" from "Ye Sleeping Knights
Of Jesus" is typical). Wry fatalism coupled with an almost prurient interest
in anything that oozes, squelches, or rots has always characterized Robyn
Hitchcock's songwriting. And on Perspex Island, his preoccupation has taken on a global dimension.
Unlike, say, No Exit, Robyn Hitchcock's Perspex Island is nihilism you can hum. The singer-songwriter's often grotesque subject matter is thrown into relief by bouncy, Beatles-inspired music. This off-kilter effect (sort of like
Herman's Hermits covering "The End") is his stock-in-trade. While Hitchcock
the songwriter is routinely compared to John Lennon, his resemblance is to the
punster who authored A Spaniard In The Works rather than the Imagine-era pontificator. Indeed, his verbal acuity and penchant for cleverness tends to overshadow his ability as a songwriter and musician -- leaving him trapped by hiw own reputation for "zaniness". It is this rep that Hitchcock battles on Perspex Island -- a disc from which the likes of "Balloon Man" are conspicuously absent.
The title, Perspex Island ("perspex" is Britspeak for "plexiglass"), is echoed in the tune "Birds in Perspex", in which the singer's "Birds in perspex/
Come alive" sounds more like a plea than an observation. If the image of a
dead animal enclosed in a desktop paperweight is extended to the title's
island, it becomes a tidy catch-phrase for a dead England.
The album's hypnotic, bass-driven opener "Oceanside" is very nearly a
Hitchcockian take on Prince's "1999", pairing grim prophecy ("Did you ever
see into the future?/Seen the big red sun that won't go down/And the giant
marks upon the hillside/And the deep red scar that was our town") with carpe
diem nonchalance: "Maybe I will find today/Maybe I will lose tomorrow". Again in "Ride," he observes dispassionately that: "It's the end of a long, hard
decade/And before the next long, hard decade/By the end of which a million
creatures yet unborn will die". Midway through "Vegetation and Dimes" he
asks with a snarl: "What're you waiting for?/The big grim reaper in a long
black limousine?/Dial this toll-free number/1-800-REAPER/Ask for Dean".
Then there's "Earthly Paradise", which boasts an apocalyptic image straight
out of Edward Lear: "There's pigs in the bedroom and pigs in the hall/They're
chewing away at the wax/And a misshapen guy in the deck chair outside/Where
Josephine used to relax".
There's a Jules Feiffer cartoon in which Bernard Mergendeiler says, "Work
reminds me of girls, lunch reminds me of girls, music reminds me of girls...
marriage reminds me of death...I don't know how I'm going to work this out."
Likewise, Hitchcock tends to see love as yet another reminder of, -- and,
ultimately, metaphor for -- death. "Birds in Perspex" offers a dry commentary
on the futility of intimacy: "Well, I take off my clothes with you/But I'm
not naked underneath/I was born with trousers on/Just about like everyone".
The interweaving of love and death in "Lysander"'s ostensibly romantic
metaphor "In my cemetery heart/They close at six/And the dead are locked in/
To be with you and I" is almost necrophilic. Even the wistful, melodic
"She Doesn't Exist" -- with backing vocals supplied by R.E.M.'s Michael Stipe --
has a chorus which can only be described as epitaphic. "If You Go Away" boasts
the neatest fusion of love and nihilism yet: "I don't believe in anything, but
you/I don't believe in anything out there/I don't believe in anything at all.../
It's cauterization time/And the whole world is going up in smoke tonight".
Like 1986's Element of Light, Perspex Island is a move towards what critics like to call "maturity" -- which for Hitchcock means addressing serious themes without the safety net of comic relief that has undercut the gravity of his intentions in the past. Not to say that Perspex Island does not bear the unmistakable stamp of its creator: only Robyn Hitchcock could describe the pointlessness of human endeavor with such gusto.
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