The Chicago Tribune
February 23, 1992
Essence Of Song: Scenes From The Fertile Mind Of Robyn Hitchcock
by Greg Kot
Robyn Hitchcock -- one of the better songwriters of our time -- has this little
problem. He's clever -- perhaps too clever -- with a wit that occasionally runs
amok on record. Besides the frequent off-color couplet, Hitchcock has been known to cram entire songs full of bizarre images (most involving sub-human
life forms, the slimier and more bacteria-laden the better).
Sometimes the jokes overwhelm the emotional content that underlies them.
"My Wife And My Dead Wife" from the 1985 Fegmania! album, for example, is a moving meditation on loss and memory -- once one gets past the
idea of a corpse joining a couple for afternoon tea.
It's no wonder Hitchcock's music has often been compared to the LSD-flavored
work of Pink Floyd's Syd Barrett, and John Lennon in his late-Beatles phase.
Unlike those artists, Hitchcock says he never gobbled more than a few
hallucinogenic drugs.
"I can see why people think that way, because of the time I grew up in and
the fact that I was influenced by people who had taken LSD," he says. "It was more their influence than the influence of the drug itself. I didn't take very much acid. I don't think I needed to, really, because I'd already
thought myself into that state."
Hitchcock's refusal to follow-the-dots in writing Pop songs -- "97 percent
of all Rock lyrics are cliches," he notes -- accounts for his status as a cult obscurity ever since forming The Soft Boys in Britain in the late-'70s.
All that may be slowly changing, however.
Hitchcock's praises were sung by R.E.M.'s Peter Buck as the Georgia band's
reputation and sales flourished, and the two began working together on Hitchcock's albums in 1988. That year, Hitchcock and his band -- The Egyptians
(bassist Andy Metcalfe and drummer Morris Windsor) -- put out their first
major-label album, and their following has been expanding ever since. Last
weekend, Hitchcock played to an enthusiastic capacity crowd of 1,200 at the
Vic, in a show that was sold out weeks in advance.
Perspex Island (A&M), Hitchcock's latest album, also is his most straightforward -- and the first he has recorded with an outside producer (Paul Fox).
"It was mixed on a car stereo in Los Angeles because it was designed to be
listened to in traffic -- it's a yuppie album," Hitchcock says with a laugh.
"It's not so much designed to get through to the public. It's more to
get through to ourselves.
"The artist's most important audience is himself. And if the artist is
dissatisfied, eventually that smell will get out to the audience, and he's going
to despise them. Because they're lapping up this stuff that you are contemptuous of."
There was no sign of dissatisfaction at the Vic last weekend. To many observers, it was Hitchcock's finest show since he began performing in Chicago in 1985.
Hitchcock, Metcalfe, and Windsor are all busy instrumentalists. Yet they
complement -- rather than step on -- one another; creating a lattice-work of bright, propulsive rhythms and melody lines. A 50-minute electric set devoted principally to songs from Perspex Island was distinguished by a show-stopping, a cappella "Uncorrected Personality Traits", a typically Hitchcockian blend of a bright melody with a twisted lyric.
The acoustic encore was even better. By stripping away instruments and
decibels, Hitchcock got at the essence of his music while surveying his career
and influences. There was the beautiful love song "Glass Hotel" and the
giddy "Yip Song" (which weaves together references to a World War II pinup
girl, Nine Inch Nails, and the melody from the nursery rhyme "This Old Man").
A subtle, moaning "Eight Miles High" worked a dark transformation on The Byrds' classic, and "My Wife And My Dead Wife" began as high camp -- with Hitchcock doing his best Bryan-Ferry-meets-Anthony-Newley lounge-lizard swagger -- but finished hushed and poignant.
"I wasn't concerned so much if other people weren't getting my songs. I was
more concerned that I wasn't getting them," Hitchcock says of the less-
oblique turn his writing has taken. "I had these songs coming out on automatic pilot, and they had quite florid images. But they weren't really telling me anything. I couldn't even tell how I really felt by singing them, because they were in another room from where my real life was taking place.
"I was, sort of, climbing into this sanctuary; kneeling before this shrine of
feathered, scaled beasts. It wasn't even me being in touch with myself. It
was more me running from myself."
Hitchcock first stopped running long enough to look into the mirror on his
bilious 1990 solo release, Eye (Twin/Tone).
"I certainly wasn't too happy when I made it," he says of the album. "But I'm pleased that I was able to get that poison out into the sunlight. Some of that had been in there for 20 years."
Perspex Island is just as direct, but decidedly more optimistic.
"I haven't had any therapy or anything -- I just have a great girlfriend," he says with a chuckle, before taking off on one of his flights into the imagination's ozone. "Everything just changed -- the windows broke and the egg got in. A lot of very high-density birds smashed into the tower, and all the dust began to blow away. The old lady who had been sitting by the table poring over The Bible: her head fell off, the straw fell out and, the wind
blew it all away."
"You know, I still have pictures in mind," he continues, belaboring the obvious, "but I just wanted to know what was going on beneath it. Like ivy
can cover a tower to the point where you don't know if it's destroying the
brickwork. You can have a beard over your face, and after a while you don't
know what shape your face is anymore.
"On Eye I tried clearing away the music, to see what was there. On Perspex we tried to clear away the words and present the music in a clear way."
Hitchcock says he wrote one song for the new album reminiscent of the old surrealism.
"I left it off the album, partly for that reason. But also because it mentions Arnold Schwarzenegger," he says. "I didn't want to deal with either crustaceans or Arnold. They both get plenty of publicity."
Laughter interrupts the conversation and Hitchcock, in mock exasperation, finishes his thought: "See, you're laughing. That's the whole point. People go, 'Gosh, what a way-out idea.' This sounds really pompous, but I've been a victim of my own humor, if you like. People would listen to my songs waiting for the 'oh-wow-what-a-wacky-line' part. Underneath it all, Morris and Andy (and even me) are good musicians -- like The Band (or someone like that). We've been playing as long as those guys have.
"It could be that there are only about 200,000 people in the world who are
metabolically able to pick up on this stuff. And that's great. But I just want to make it clear that I'm a songwriter like the rest of them."
Rating The Robyn Hitchcock Solo And Group Releases
by Greg Kot
A selective Robyn Hitchcock discography:
(With The Soft Boys)
Underwater Moonlight (Armageddon import, 1980) ****: One of the British New Wave's best albums; includes the classic "I Wanna Destroy You".
(Solo)
I Often Dream Of Trains (Relativity, 1984) ****: Witty ("Uncorrected Personality Traits"), moving ("Flavour of Night"), and sometimes just plain strange ("Sometimes I Wish I Was A Pretty Girl").
Eye (Twin/Tone, 1990) ****: Despite the hushed, acoustic setting, this is Hitchcock's darkest and most powerful release.
(With The Egyptians)
Fegmania! (Slash, 1985) ****: Hard Pop with a twist.
Gotta Let This Hen Out! (Relativity, 1985) ***1/2: Live retrospective.
Element Of Light (Relativity, 1986) ***1/2: Delicate, incisive.
Globe Of Frogs (A&M, 1988) **: The weirdness sounds forced.
Queen Elvis (A&M, 1989) **1/2: Strings, horns add little.
Perspex Island (A&M, 1991) ***: Richly melodic.
Hitchcock on Hitchcock:
"Perspex Island, Fegmania, and Underwater Moonlight are the most listener-friendly. All are very much in the Pop idiom. Trains and Eye have got more emotional depth. With The Egyptians, we've never made it onto record as strong as we are live."
COYRIGHT NOTICE