The New York Times
December 14, 1986
Robyn Hitchcock: Pain Under The Wit
by Robert Palmer
The ground floor of the Tower Records downtown store was crowded wall-to-wall with curious onlookers on a recent afternoon. Choice standing room had been claimed an hour earlier; even the stairs leading to the store's second floor were packed.
On a makeshift stage in the midst of the throng, guitar in hand, stood Robyn Hitchcock, a tall, dark-haired Englishman in his early 30s. He was asking the crowd, which seemed to hang on his every word, if there were any requests. "Uncorrected Personality Traits", shouted one group of fans. "Sounds Great When You're Dead", demanded another. Both songs are darkly ironic, hugely amusing staples of live performances by Mr. Hitchcock and his band, The Egyptians.
The singer knotted his brow, looked around as if to size up the audience one more time, then abruptly hit a guitar chord and began singing "City of Shame". The fans glanced nervously at each other. "City of Shame" is not an amusing song, nor a particularly ironic one. It is a song about personal and societal breakdown, about loneliness and fear, from an early-'80s album many of the fans at Tower apparently hadn't heard (Black Snake Diamond Role). Only after they had absorbed "City of Shame" did Mr. Hitchcock call on two of The Egyptians for a singalong in barbershop harmony: "Uncorrected personality traits/That seem whimsical in a child/May prove to be ugly in a/Fully grown adult".
After the performance, listeners waited in line up to two hours for Mr. Hitchcock's autograph and, perhaps, for a bit of his fabled repartee. After all, it's largely his mordant wit that has won him an American following. Who but Robyn Hitchcock would warble, in a Country And Western drinking song, "If you believe in nothing, honey, it believes in you"? Who else would rhapsodize lyrically about "The juicy flounder and the tender chub", in a song on one of his favorite subjects, seafood?
Mr. Hitchcock's first American record releases, last year's studio album Fegmania! (Slash LP and cassette) and the live recording Gotta Let This Hen Out! (Relativity LP and cassette) emphasized his rather surreal sense of humor. But there is a great deal more to Mr. Hitchcock than that. He has been making records in England since the late-'70s, first as singer-songwriter-guitarist for The Soft Boys, and, since 1981, on his own.
Each of his albums has its own story to tell. For every bit of humor, there's a faceoff with fear or death. The lyrics are often barbed, and they spare nobody -- least of all Mr. Hitchcock. As in the best Pop songs by John Lennon or Syd Barrett, two songwriters Mr. Hitchcock admires, the mercurial brilliance of the wordplay almost, but not quite, masks the pain inside.
Whether he happens to be praising prawns or chronicling a disintegrating mental state, Robyn Hitchcock is, first of all, an astonishingly gifted songwriter. His newer admirers may have him pegged as something of a prankster, but they are in for a surprise -- just the sort of surprise he gave his audience at Tower Records. The Relativity label (149-03 Guy R. Brewer Boulevard, Jamaica, Queens, 11434) is in the process of releasing all of Mr. Hitchcock's albums -- as a Soft Boy and a solo artist -- in The United States.
One can only conclude after listening back-to-back to albums like I Often Dream of Trains, Black Snake Diamond Role, and The Soft Boys' Underwater Moonlight that the man is incapable of writing a mediocre song -- let alone a piece of fluff. Behind that engagingly warped exterior lurks the almost obsessive consistency of a master craftsman -- and one of Pop music's best-kept secrets. Only now the secret is out.
Relativity recently released Mr. Hitchcock's new album, Element of Light, then followed it with two earlier albums, which many aficionados tout as his masterpieces, Black Snake Diamond Role and I Often Dream of Trains. For the collector, Relativity offers Invisible Hitchcock, a collection of songs and performances from singles and other sources that didn't make it onto any of his earlier albums. This is a lot of music for the public to absorb all at once. But together, these four disks should bring Mr. Hitchcock at least some of the recognition that eluded him for so long.
Black Snake Diamond Role, Mr. Hitchcock's first solo album after the breakup of The Soft Boys, chronicles a period of confusion and despair. The music is hard-edged. Yet there are fine shadings -- and enough melody -- to balance the bleakness of a song like "Brenda's Iron Sledge", which evokes holiday sleigh bells echoing across the frozen surface of The River Styx, and gives a sinister angel-of-death figure the absurd but somehow menacing tagline, "Please Don't Call Me Reg/It's Not My Name".
In 1984, Mr. Hitchcock recorded I Often Dream of Trains at home, using portable equipment and doing almost all the singing and playing himself. His eccentric persona is well represented: this is the album that introduced "Uncorrected Personality Traits", "Sounds Great When You're Dead", and "Sometimes I Wish I Was a Pretty Girl". Yet the album's overall mood is reflective, autumnal.
For Pop listeners who admire the songcraft of Lennon and McCartney, Bob Dylan, or Elvis Costello, these albums will come as a revelation. But Mr. Hitchcock's newest album, Element of Light, is in some ways even more impressive. The songs are every bit as penetrating, as fearless, as incisive and engaging as those on the earlier disks.
In terms of subjects and moods, Element of Light is Mr. Hitchcock's most diverse album. It ranges from the atmospheric "Raymond Chandler Evening" to the despairing "Never Stop Bleeding", observes President Reagan at Bitburg, and chronicles the coming of the plague to a medieval estate. Mr. Hitchcock's excellent band, The Egyptians, frames each song deftly and appropriately. Talent of this caliber simply can't be ignored -- or consigned to a cult following -- much longer.
COPYRIGHT NOTICE