The Washington Post
November 8, 1996
Imbibing Hitchcock's Elixir
by Joyce Jones
Robyn Hitchcock's animal kingdom -- the china pugs and prawns, the frogs and insect mothers that bounced off the craniums of literal-minded Rock critics, who in turn, labeled him "whimsical" -- began dying back a bit around the time of 1989's Queen Elvis. Perhaps from pesticides in the food chain, or excessive atmospheric UV levels.
But the Englishman's ever-increasing power as a songwriter is the real cause. Though Hitchcock can certainly be whimsical -- as the barbershop quartet of "Uncorrected Personality Traits" or the sly Folk Blues of "Give Me A Spanner, Ralph" have proved -- his wit has always been primarily a conduit for floating serious questions of existence over strange and beautiful melodies.
That's what Hitchcock's new release, Moss Elixir (Warner Bros.), does a lot of, even getting -- in one of the few songs about a reptile -- sort of political: "Limbaugh -- he was talking through a bimbo/But don't touch that dial/Or that hateful smile/Kate said, 'The flowers of intolerance and hatred/ Are blooming kind of early this year/Someone's been watering them'".
For fans of Hitchcock's '70s beginnings with The Soft Boys, and later, The Egyptians, the three-year wait for a new release has been doubly rewarded. Elixir is accompanied by Mossy Liquor, a limited edition, vinyl-only LP of outtakes and alternative cuts. But releasing two records simultaneously can provide some momentary uncertainty, as Hitchcock explains by phone from London: "About two weeks before it was mastered, there were songs that would have been on Moss Elixir that moved over [to Mossy Liquor] I felt songs like "Trilobite" and "Cool Bug Rumble", which I think are great bits of music, might get irritating after awhile. So I tried to keep the sober adult songs for the CD."
Indeed, Liquor contains most of the diminishing "bio-delic" imagery upon which critics still fixate. But Elixir's obvious strength is its honest and emotional survey of the human condition. "The Speed Of Things" movingly encapsulates the lives of a parent and child in two verses. The hypnotic meditation on loss, "You And Oblivion", glides "past hedges and clocks/Off to infinity" before climaxing in massively arpeggiated guitar arabesques. The creature "covered in grease and lime and scales" of "Filthy Bird" sounds familiar, but soon metaphorically springs into social commentary and references to Van Halen's contribution in the Persian Gulf War.
After The Egyptians' demise in the early-'90s, Hitchcock briefly lived in D.C. and focused on painting, though he recalls beginning the single "Alright, Yeah" in an Adams Morgan basement. He returns Wednesday with fellow Brit Billy Bragg to appear at the 9:30 Club. Hitchcock will be accompanied by Deni Bonet, who plays violin and viola on the new releases.
On a good night, the boundaries of Hitchcock's songs are extended by his vivid and humorous stage banter that can offer extra context to songs -- but just-as-often bleeds into performance art. Such moments attracted acclaimed director Jonathan Demme, who in December will film Hitchcock in New York. "[Demme] likes filming musicians performing live," Hitchcock says. "He's very keen on that. He doesn't like overdubbing and lip synching (and stuff). That attitude is absolutely after my heart. I've never liked videos. This will just be me performing live in a storefront somewhere in Manhattan of Mr. Demme's choosing. And I'll have a few guest musicians with me doing little bits and pieces."
Perhaps film will capture more fully all of Hitchcock's dimensions. "I've got quite a broad sweep of work or stylistic tendencies. I can write a song like 'So You Think You're In Love' or 'Heaven', and the hard-core fans act in disbelief and say this is far too straight. But all the radio programmers say, 'Wow, this is great. You can write a hit song, Hitchcock.' My songwriting spectrum has been probably too broad or too inconsistent to give people a definite idea of what I'm about. Which is why the perception of me is very murky. Some people think I'm a good songwriter, some people think I'm a wiseguy, some people think I'm a whacked out proto-druggie."
Hitchcock's progression from Soft Boy to solo artist has always been a bit "murky". In the mid-'70s as the Sex Pistols were shooting to prominence, The Soft Boys were rejected for their four-part harmonies and instrumental prowess. Punk refuseniks, they owed more to their "Can of B's" -- Beefheart, Barrett, The Byrds and The Beatles -- than to anarchy in the UK. In the '80s The Egyptians further developed their Beatlesque attack, and frequently ruled college radio -- only to be knocked from No. 1 by the stylistic and commercial changes that Nirvana wrought.
Now in 1996, Hitchcock is content to "keep my head well below the parapet" but still "happy to sell a few more records." And with Beatles anthologies being released, even John Lennon, whom Hitchcock has dedicated an album to, has "recorded" recently, though Hitchcock doesn't care much for it: "I didn't think ['Free as a Bird'] sounded like The Beatles. Mainly because I think the drums didn't sound like Ringo -- that, sort of, thudding sound that he had. That didn't seem to be there. Also, what really bugs me is that John Lennon really sounds dead. You've got a really well-recorded Paul and George, and then you've got this rather ghostly, flanged...I mean it was just a mono cassette (or something). I think they should have done it as a, kind of, exorcism for themselves. That was probably a good thing. And they should have just bootlegged it. Of course, they had to make it this, sort of, spearhead of the campaign. You know, they had to sell the first anthology through that. It was really sad because it wasn't even relevant to that collection of Beatles songs.... Yeah, I mean, they're entitled to do it. They're The Beatles and everyone else isn't."
"I don't think many people are going to change the world like The Beatles. Lennon mattered so much. You can't imagine anyone shooting McCartney, 'cause he wouldn't really matter."
Which brings up what is perhaps Hitchcock's biggest theme -- mortality. Through the years he's imagined it both humorously -- afterlife dinners with god and the devil debating "Top Muse" status -- and somberly -- "Time goes backward at the end/You turn into a child again/Then you're dust". So after establishing that no one knows what happens when you die (and you can think whatever you want), he offers some possibilities: "I suspect that what happens is when you die you dissipate. And people say in physics that energy or matter cannot be created or destroyed. So maybe you go into making the cosmos one semi-billionth of a degree warmer. Or maybe your soul becomes a miasma, and people will pass through patches of it. Maybe people will go through bits of Hitler's soul and freeze suddenly. Maybe we go through Gandhi's soul and get a nice warm feeling.
"Who knows whether the soul exists, or whether that's just a term for something we don't really understand? Humanity isn't necessarily through with perceiving things. Because we don't believe in the flat Earth or the sun going 'round the world, or because those concepts are banished, we're inclined to think that we've found everything out. But there might be some really obvious things we just haven't discovered yet. Maybe this is the end of humanity's 5,000 year hangover (or something)."
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