The Tech
May 4, 1990
Eye
Robyn Hitchcock
A&M TwinTone Records
by Deborah A. Levinson
I have a weakness for acoustic albums. There's a certain raw power to an unembellished voice over plucked, steel-stringed guitars. That's why I am so disappointed with Michelle Shocked's EP, Live, and why I am so entranced by Robyn Hitchcock's Eye.
The ability to hold one's own against a band has never been a problem for Robyn Hitchcock. The ex-Soft Boy usually records with his group The Egyptians rather than producing solo albums. Eye is his first acoustic album since 1984's I Often Dream Of Trains, but Hitchcock has been performing songs from the former album since his 1988 solo tour. I remember hearing "Executioner", "Raining Twilight Coast", and "Agony Of Pleasure" at concerts two years ago, and I've been waiting ever since for them to show up on vinyl. (Yes, vinyl; the LP isn't dead yet!)
Like I Often Dream Of Trains, Eye's only instrumentation is acoustic guitar and piano. Hitchcock uses the sparse arrangements as a framework for his frequently bizarre lyrics about love, relationships, and sexuality. "Queen Elvis" -- the previously unreleased title track from Hitchcock's last album -- deals with transvestites, and "Agony Of Pleasure" is even more blunt about its subject:
In agony of pleasure
I crumble to my knees
I lick your frozen treasure
You cup my furry bees
Another long-lost title track also appears on Eye -- "Flesh Cartoons" was the original title for Hitchcock's 1988 album, Globe of Frogs.
Most of Hitchcock's love songs are simple and sentimental in a naive sort of way. In "Beautiful Girl", he sings, "I'm in love with a beautiful girl/Well, I hope she's in love with whom I think she's in love/'cause I'm in love with a beautiful girl". "Executioner", however, is far more vicious; describing a failed relationship. Hitchcock snarls, "You're the executioner".
As a guitarist, Hitchcock alternates between shimmering Roger McGuinnisms and delicate broken chords, as in "Raining Twilight Coast". The only instrumental, "'Chinese Water Python'", is as measured as a medieval dance and as gentle as "Cathedral" from I Often Dream Of Trains.
Eye lacks the lyrics-from-outer-space goofiness of I Often Dream Of Trains, making it one of Hitchcock's most solid albums. But for those who miss the sheer strangeness of songs like "Furry Green Atom Bowl", there's "Certainly Clickot", in which Hitchcock ad-libs lines like "Dover, get undressed/This car is parked on a sponge" and "She uncorked herself, teeth spilling from her nostrils" over the repeated vocal counterpoint "She's certainly clickot/She's certainly cool".
As an added bonus, Eye includes a Hitchcock short story, "Legends Of The South Wight, 2: The Glass Hotel", about a palatial glass hotel anchored to the ground by an attic full of melons.
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