The Vancouver Sun
February 15, 1992
Songwriter Swings Away From Wild Images
by Greg Potter
The thought of British songsmith Robyn Hitchcock writing conventional Pop songs is akin to the notion of the Monty Python gang doing standup in Las Vegas.
But in a bizarre paradox, the strange becoming normal isn't really so strange at all.
"I think in the old days, I made a conscious attempt to avoid the mundane," says the eloquent and witty Hitchcock, who will be at 86th Street next Friday with his band, The Egyptians, supporting their latest, Perspex Island.
"I hated cliches -- both in music and in songwriting -- but there are certain truths that you can only express in a time-warp kind of way."
Hitchcock's personal philosophy led him to write such warm and melodic -- though decidedly off-kilter -- ditties as "Uncorrected Personality Traits", "Tropical Flesh Mandala", "Balloon Man", "Eaten by Her Own Dinner", and "My Wife And My Dead Wife".
Nowadays, the 38-year-old Hitchcock and The Egyptians -- bassist-keyboardist Andy Metcalfe and drummer Morris Windsor -- have turned their sights to more accessible subject matter while maintaining their Beatles/Badfinger-ish vision of Pop.
"I was thinking I'd like to get something out that's more straight-ahead," says Hitchcock, who first gained notoriety in the late-'70s with The Soft Boys. "And I was lucky. My prayers were answered."
Perspex Island is laced with such hook-laden tunes as "So You Think You're in Love", "Ultra Unbelievable Love", and "She Doesn't Exist" -- songs that tend to leave Hitchcock's affection for surreal imagery to The Egyptians' album art, which he paints himself.
"I love all those things, but they had become a cliche in my work," he says of the fish-fowl-and-foliage imagery that often crops up in his songs. "I think it just made the whole thing seem like something for kids, really: making people look at things the wrong way. Like if you walk into a room with a new suit, and everybody just looks at your shoes."
As for his visual art -- mysterious watercolors leaning at times towards the likes of Hieronymus Bosch's The Garden of Earthly Delights -- Hitchcock never seriously considered taking it up full time (though he's hoping to mount an exhibition next year).
"You have to be really devoted to it, and accept that you might not make any money. On the other hand, it's not that hard to live in Rock music.
"Maybe if I'm lucky I'll get an art exhibition. But people would only come along because I'm a musician. Besides," he adds with a laugh, "any serious art critic would immediately be able to savage what I do."
COPYRIGHT NOTICE