The Herald (Glasgow)
May 10, 1995
Robyn Hitchcock, Renfrew Ferry, Glasgow
by David Belcher
Never judge by appearances. That admitted, last night's crowd looked the type to which Robyn Hitchcock has become accustomed during his stop-go 15-year solo career.
Impoverished students eking out one pint of Guinness over three hours. Close-cropped criminal recidivists with prison tans. An elderly and professorial type tamping Golden Old Navy Shag into his Meerschaum and puffing reflectively.
When Robyn ambled out, he resembled Paul Merton's elder brother (i.e. blokeish and quotidian). Deceptive, that. Even if you were to judge him solely by his intros to his songs (and not his songs themselves), Robyn Hitchcock is surpassing strange. Elliptical, his intros are. And oblique.
How did Robyn tee up one song? By saying it was about the tiny marshmallows that reproduce inside your TV set (and whenever you ring the police to complain, it's always a marshmallow that answers the phone).
He said another song was about being menaced by solid objects (like wardrobes). This may have been a metaphor. For something. Or not.
My favourite intro -- a long, detailed one -- introduced a song about an artist who lived in a white tower with no downstairs, and he was stung by a wasp-woman. But then Robyn admitted that none of this was actually mentioned in the song.
And the songs? Unlike the intros, they're compact and pithy. Funnily brilliant, too, sporting dry lines like: "I remember everything as if it happened years ago". Deadlines forced me to leave early, during "My Wife And My Dead Wife".
A couple at the back sang along, word-perfect. She looked 18. He could have been 70. Apt. Surreal. Hitchcockian.
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