August, 1991
Robyn Hitchcock And The Egyptians
A&M Press Department Biograph
"I'm different from my songs the way you're different from your dreams. As a songwriter, all I'm doing is dreaming in public..."
Welcome the return of Robyn Hitchcock And The Egyptians. Their third and newest A&M album, Perspex Island will at last open a whole new audience to what the group's already substantial fan-base has appreciated all along: wonderfully crafted songs filled with unmatched wit and wisdom, performed with precision musicianship and impeccable three-part harmonies.
Robyn Hitchcock, Andy Metcalfe, and Morris Windsor (The Egyptians), started out as The Soft Boys in the late-'70s and have played together off-and-on ever since, making music that has defied categorization. Much of this is due to the distinctly literary perspective that informs Hitchcock's songs. He has been likened to Noel Coward, Raymond Chandler, or J.G. Ballard as often as he has been to John Lennon, Captain Beefheart, and The Byrds.
More so than on his two previous A&M releases, Globe Of Frogs and Queen Elvis, Perspex Island uses straightforward terms to address universal subjects. "This is my first 'adult' record in that it doesn't put anything in terms of insects, seafood, and vegetation," he says by way of initial explanation. "It's not seeing life through the science-fiction filter that small boys like to use. It's, sort of, the third album in a trilogy that would include Underwater Moonlight [The Soft Boys' second LP, 1980) and Fegmania! (first as The Egyptians, in 1985). It's not aimed exclusively at Robyn Hitchcock And The Egyptians fans."
"I'm pleased because this record isn't trying to protect itself -- I had far too many layers of protection before, both in what I thought and in adopting other people's masks. This is actually the first record where I didn't have people like Dylan and Lennon peering over my shoulder saying, 'You'll never be as tall as we were, kid.'"
Like the best of those songwriters' work, Perspex Island looks at the concept of love from many different angles. Be it the optimistic "Ultra Unbelievable Love", the philosophically splendid "Ride", or the Beatlesque "So You Think You're In Love" (the album's first single), there's more love on this album than on all of Hitchcock's releases combined.
Explaining the title, Robyn describes, "Perspex is what's called 'plexiglass' in The States. It's the stuff that was used on the cockpits for the fighters in World War II, and in England you can buy these little perspex paperweights with a seahorse (or something like that) inside of them," he explains. "'Birds In Perspex' is basically about wanting something that's dead or frozen to suddenly reanimate."
Aside from Andy and Morris, Perspex Island features appearances by two of Hitchcock's "poor relations" (says Robyn); Peter Buck, who plays guitar and mandolin on eight of the album's 11 tracks ("on the next record, Peter will be on more songs than I am," he says), and Michael Stipe, who adds vocals to "She Doesn't Exist". Says Robyn: "We started recording in Athens right before Christmas -- just Peter and me -- to see how things would go with Paul Fox, the producer. Rather than working with the whole band, we just recorded with a click track, and later added things on to the tape. 'Ride' and 'She Doesn't Exist' are both from the Athens tape, with the rest of the band recorded underneath. Michael also sang on a song called 'Dark Green Energy', which isn't on the album (but will be released later)."
Producer Paul Fox (XTC's Oranges And Lemons, among others) proved a natural choice for the album. Hitchcock explains it all for you: "He did I'm Screeching For Paradise, Mother, and Concentrate On Yourself Baby, And You'll Explode. Frustrated by his lack of success in that field, he turned to lawnmower salesmanship -- but it was too late. L.A. was already gripped with an epidemic of people spraying their lawns green to avoid the water. So he did the only thing he could do: he turned to producing records. He did Too Much Joy, and he's doing the new Sugarcubes album. He's also done more mainstream things like Boy George." He continues, "We haven't had anyone other than ourselves to bounce creative things off of in a long time, and Paul was like a cross between a father and an audience. I think all three of us have a basic human need for father figures."
Perspex Island is a potent combination of Fox's invaluable input, The Egyptians' crack playing, and Robyn's straightforward powerful songwriting. Robyn reflects: "It's damn hard to write songs as chirpy and bouncy as the early Beatles did without it becoming a, sort of, pastiche. It's hard to find that kind of faith and still make it fresh. So it's easy to write depressing songs like 'She Doesn't Exist'. But I couldn't take a whole album of that anymore. 'Ultra Unbelievable Love', for instance, is, sort of, a prayer. It deals with something that everyone has to find. If you believe that music is a form of magic and a form of imprecation -- which I've always believed -- well...my songs used to be curses. Now, they're prayers."
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