The San Francisco Chronicle
September 22, 1991
Perspex Island
Robyn's Stark Fantasy World
by Tom Lanham
With his new album, Perspex Island, eccentric cult artist and part-time San Francisco resident Robyn Hitchcock claims he finally wants his fans to "see how I feel, rather than staring at me like some sort of freak show." And, sure enough, the first single, "So You Think You're in Love" -- which has simultaneously hit No. 1 on the CMJ, Album Network, Gavin Report, and Radio and Records Alternative charts (and is bulleted at No. 3 on Billboard's Modern Rock Tracks) -- is a moving, down-to-earth tribute to the singer's new paramour, whom he met in the Bay Area two years ago.
But at heart, Hitchcock -- whose work has been critically compared to that of demented rock visionary Syd Barrett -- will always be just a little weird.
A touch of that weirdness surfaced while he was seated by the pool of Hollywood's Roosevelt Hotel. He watched protectively as his girlfriend, Cynthia, took a few tentative steps into the water. Hitchcock was suddenly reminded of an old family legend about a great aunt who went swimming back in 1927 and was never heard from again.
His bushy eyebrows, unkempt mop of grizzled hair, and mischievous, twinkling eyes created an absent-minded-professor effect as he told how she swam far from the shore of The Isle of Wight, never realizing that "there were various things" -- the eyebrows lowered into a sinister glare -- "off the coast. Have you ever read The Sea Raiders by H.G. Wells, about these great transparent beasts that digest people at low tide?"
Mollusks. Insects. Spectral things that go bump in the night. For 15 years and as many albums, this has been the dreamscape world of Robyn Hitchcock. His attitude has typically been "It's an evil world, so I'll be worse." At 38, he's dealing with adulthood, a serious relationship and a mistaken general consensus that he is, like his idol Barrett, quite mad.
"Syd Barrett sang the blues as earnestly as Robert Johnson, because he had the devil after him and it finally got him," Hitchcock theorizes, sipping his afternoon cup of tea. "But, like Icarus, all those guys flew too high and their minds were sacrificed: You return to earth a gibbering idiot and nobody knows what you've seen. Sure, it's legendary stuff and you get tons of books written about you -- but I didn't die, I survived."
Hitchcock has disdained conventional song arrangement and subject matter, he said, shrugging, "at a cost. People expect to buy a record that has something called 'The Power of Love' on it, or 'The Price to Pay' or 'Better Late Than Never'." Growing up, Hitchcock remembers having an "intense contempt for normality in all its forms." In his first recording group, The Soft Boys, he wanted to "avoid cliche whenever possible -- it was our manifesto." Consequently, "The music industry never said there was a place for us, and they're still not sure."
Hitchcock leaned back in his patio chair and broke into a little last-laugh kind of chuckle. The night before, he and his backup band, The Egyptians, had played one of the only shows he felt like doing this year, at Los Angeles' tiny Whiskey A Go-Go club. The packed house was dancing and singing along with each strange lyric. Members of R.E.M., longtime supporters, also were in attendance, and guitarist Peter Buck took the stage for several encores, including a chiming rendition of the Byrds classic "The Bells of Rhymney".
Buck -- who developed his style listening to old Soft Boys records and whose ditties have included "Balloon Man", "Madonna of the Wasps", and "My Wife and My Dead Wife" -- adds his handiwork to several Perspex Island tracks, as does R.E.M. mouthpiece Michael Stipe.
Like most of Hitchcock's work, the songs rely on pert, jangling guitar rhythms, abrupt chord changes and '60s-vintage off-kilter harmonies, sung in his nasal high-society style. This writing ability has justly earned the singer his huge cult following. It approaches Beatles pop perfection, usually with only one or two twisted notes marking the effort as starkly Hitchcock.
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