CMJ New Music Report
April 17, 1995 (Issue 423)
You & Oblivion
by Jim Caligiuri
You & Oblivion is the culmination of Rhino's impressive endeavor to reissue Robyn Hitchcock's "middle period" recordings (1980-87), and is the only collection of the bunch comprised solely of previously unreleased material. A 22-track bonanza, it consists of recordings made between 1981 and 1987, realized in a variety of locales around England -- as well as a few from a live performance at KUSF in San Francisco. It's largely a solo-acoustic effort -- with Chris Cox or Andy Metcalfe on bass on a couple of tracks, and Peter Buck adding 12-string guitar on the mellifluous "Birdshead". Tracks like "Take Your Knife Out Of My Back", "Victorian Squid", "Fiend Before The Shrine", and "September Cones" flaunt Hitchcock's peculiar wit, expanding on the decidedly British Psychedelic Folk tradition that has its roots in John Lennon and Syd Barrett. Instead of detailed liner notes, the CD booklet contains the first part of "The Professor", a typically eccentric story written by Hitchcock and James Fletcher. The story continues in the booklet for Invisible Hitchcock, an earlier compilation of outtakes and B-sides (and companion piece, of sorts, to You & Oblivion).
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