The Washington Post
June 16, 1989
Robyn Hitchcock
by Mark Jenkins
"As you know, we're kind of hilarious," Robyn Hitchcock explained of the British to the Lisner Auditorium crowd Wednesday night. Preceding some songs with free-associative raps and performing such deadpan-surrealistic numbers as "My Wife And My Dead Wife", Hitchcock was indeed funny, but he made a point of being more than that. The former Soft Boy ranged across his career for songs as diverse as the Folk-y reverie "I Often Dream of Trains", the hard-edged, broken-hearted rocker "Freeze", and the delightful garage-band throwaway "Listening to the Higsons" -- proving that there's more to his formula than Lewis Carroll rhymes and Roger McGuinn riffs. Backed expertly by longtime cohorts The Egyptians (drummer Morris Windsor and bassist Andy Metcalfe) and a British phone box, Hitchcock's performance was, like his songs, both intense and playful.
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