N.M.E.
October 27, 1984
An Old Anglepoise Lamp Might Let You Down
Robyn Hitchcock
I Often Dream Of Trains
by Adrian Thrills
In Home Counties hibernation since his last solo project in 1982, former Soft Boy Robyn Hitchcock's return to the recording realm coincides with a strange resurgence of interest in his earlier work: a series of Soft Boys reissues have recently been making some surprising and unexpected dents in the independent charts.
Whether this long-lost legion of Soft Boys fans will find the patience to sit through the indulgences of I Often Dream Of Trains is another matter. A completely acoustic, drummerless set of songs about the fixations of the loneseome eccentric, this album all but commits suicide in its suffocating self-obsessions. Subjects like death and depression are uneasy bedfellows with the kind of Postpunk mysticism that is always fashionable in the mushroom season and, over 14 songs, such intropsective whining does become rather tiresome.
On the plus side, certain songs do possess a certain sparkle beneath the smartarse whimsical plane of inspired idiocy that only The Dain