The New York Times
April 3, 1988
Robyn Hitchcock's Songs
by Jon Pareles
Robyn Hitchcock's songs could stand on their lyrics alone -- deadpan, off-the-wall, funny-strange phantasmagorias of protoplasm and its discontents, where ordinary life offers no refuge from organic processes or disruptive visions. In "A Globe of Frogs", the title song of his latest album, a disembodied soul, searching for reincarnation, settles on a lonely old woman whose children have been "certified insane" -- hardly a standard Pop song scenario. Sometimes, Mr. Hitchcock couches his lyrics in bouncy, straightforward, 1960's-style Pop or Folk Rock; more often, he does with Pop song structures what his lyrics do with the laws of physics: casually warping and dissolving them.
At the Beacon Theater on Thursday, Robyn Hitchcock And The Egyptians -- Mr. Hitchcock on guitar, Andy Metcalfe on bass, and Morris Windsor on drums (plus Peter Buck from R.E.M. as guest guitarist) -- treated his songs as informal romps, knocking them off as if their tempo changes and unexpected episodes were as basic as Chuck Berry. It's a hugely adaptable band, able to pull off everything from the pounding Rock of "The Man With The Lightbulb Head" to the sustained harmonies of "Winchester" to the Raga Rock of "A Globe of Frogs". Mr. Buck filled out the band's skeletally effective arrangements with chiming Folk Rock guitar.
While most of The Egyptians' stage-show consisted of Mr. Metcalfe wandering the stage, Mr. Hitchcock revealed a surreal vaudeville streak when he didn't have guitar parts to play, echoing the lyrics with smooth gestures like slow-motion charades.
There's plenty of humor in Mr. Hitchcock's words and music, but there's also a streak of grim, clear-eyed fatalism, the certainty that mankind isn't completely in control. "I'd like to reassure you", Mr. Hitchcock sang in his last encore, "Raymond Chandler Evening", "But I'm not that kind of guy".
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