The Boston Globe
June 19, 1989
Robyn Hitchcock And The Egyptians -- In Concert With Poi Dog Pondering At Berklee Performance Center, Saturday night
Hitchcock Coming Into His Own
by Jim Sullivan
Around London, not long after Sid Vicious died, the graffiti started showing up on walls: "Sid Lives!"
If Robyn Hitchcock scrawls graffiti in his mind -- and he does do a lot of strange things in there -- he might subconsciously write: "Syd lives!" This Syd being Syd Barrett, Pink Floyd's founding singer-guitarist and psychedelic genius who crashed on the rocks of mental illness not long after his Rock 'n' Roll heyday. Barrett was a master of juxtaposition, unafraid to close the most whimsical of songs, such as "Bike", with a menacing coda, jumping into odd meters and seemingly illogical -- but oft trenchant -- lyricism. (Capitol recently released an album of Barrett's old songs and rare tracks called Opel.)
You can trace much of what Hitchcock, a fellow Brit, does back to Barrett: sharp juxtaposition, trebly guitar leads, strong Pop sensibility, a non-Americanized singing voice, elliptical lyricism, a love of sonic fragments, an interest in themes both large (love) and small (fish), a blend of acoustic and electric instrumentation, and a willingness to take any Pop song on a psychedelic jag or jam. He did this with his first band of note, the underappreciated Soft Boys (1977-81), and he's been doing it since solo and, of late, with The Egyptians.
It's often seemed that if Barrett was a case study in dementia, Hitchcock is a case of studied dementia. That is, he's not quite as crazy as he seems. That's certainly okay -- it allows Hitchcock to bypass trips to the asylum. But in the past, Hitchcock has seemed stiff and hesitant on stage. Not now. At 37, the lanky singer-guitarist may be coming into his own: Saturday's 90-minute set before 1,100 at Berklee was far stronger than the merely pleasant Paradise show a year ago. A better song selection, a stronger new album (Queen Elvis) upon which to draw, and more overall fire from Hitchcock and his mates -- bassist Andy Metcalfe and drummer Morris Windsor. (R.E.M.'s Peter Buck, a Soft Boys fan, played on Hitchcock's tour last year. Curiously, he may have had an inhibiting effect.)
Saturday, prior to playing "Madonna Of The Wasps" -- a lilting song about a woman who's been fused with a wasp -- Hitchcock, dressed in a baggy checkerboard suit, found himself in a phone booth on stage, talking to "Marsha" (and us), explaining, "I'm physically alone, but I'm used to all these disembodied people." Indeed: Hitchcock's is a fanciful, disjointed world. In his best song, "My Wife And My Dead Wife", he wrestles with the two entities, and eventually is lured into the ocean to join wife no. 1, where she rests, uncomfortably. What are some of Hitchcock and his characters' wants? Oh, to jump into the Queen of England's bloodstream ("Veins Of The Queen"), to observe people exploding, to watch people jump off the Empire State Building ("Balloon Man"). All of this in a cheery context. If Hitchcock has a mordant wit, he's also got a buoyant Pop sensibility. Nothing he does is an emotional downer.
Most everything takes twists and turns. "Freeze" has a gorgeous fast/slow tempo shift; "The Devil's Coachman" is pure left-field bliss as Hitchcock sings, "Yesterday I saw the devil in my food/I wasn't hungry but I played with it". Later, the devil appears in his bed and, while Hitchcock could've strangled it, he opts to make the devil breakfast instead. Why? "Because I'm English". As with many of his songs, you smile and go, "Huh?" Call it delusion and grandeur: the work of a man making a strange, but compelling, mark on the Pop scene.
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