The Rocket
July 5, 2000
Robyn Hitchcock
A Star For Bram
(Editions PAF! CD)
by Robert Allen
Grant-Lee Phillips and Robyn Hitchcock have more in common than you may think. Both are supremely distinctive songwriters, and each has recently used the Internet to release albums deemed not suitable for major-label release.
Hitchcock's A Star For Bram is an independently-released 50-minute selection of outtakes from his 1999 Warner Bros. album, Jewels For Sophia. Hitchcock is prolific enough that he can get away with something like this and not have it feel like substandard work. These are finished, fully-fleshed-out songs -- not abandoned, half-baked works. Only one of the 12 tracks, the superfluous "Antwoman (Dub)", is a version of a song from Jewels (though another, "1974", is a wonderful electric version (featuring Grant-Lee Phillips on guitar) of a song from Hitchcock's acoustic live album, Storefront Hitchcock). Other treasures include the Faux-Acoustic Blues "I Wish I Liked You", and "I Saw Nick Drake" (one of the most original and touching tributes from one artist to another I've ever heard). Jewels For Sophia used the most "commercial" (a relative term, I know) tracks from the sessions, and there aren't any leftovers from that record's Seattle recording dates. But for Hitchcock fans, there is much here to greedily devour.
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