The Washington Post
April 2, 1986
Hitchcock & The Egyptians
by J.D. Considine
Robyn Hitchcock And The Egyptians are a decidedly eccentric band. What else can be said of a group whose leader would introduce a song with a deadpan dissertation on homosexual periodicals of the mid-1960s? But, as the band ably demonstrated at the 9:30 Club Friday night, such nonsense is unlikely to impede the British group's success. If anything, it ought to accelerate things.
Although The Egyptians made for a crack rhythm team, Hitchcock remained the focus of this localized insanity. With a droll delivery and an endearingly ragged voice, he pulled laughs from the giddy non-sequiturs of "Brenda's Iron Sledge" and played up the B-movie effects in "The Man With the Lightbulb Head". A lot of the fun came from his lyrics and the comically surreal stories that prefaced some of his songs. But his melodic sense was no less impressive, as much in the wacky quartet harmony of "Uncorrected Personality Traits" as in the Beatlesque flourishes of "Egyptian Cream" and "Ted, Woody And Junior".
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