CMJ New Music Report
August 9, 1991 (Issue 248)
Robyn Hitchcock And The Egyptians
Perspex Island
So St. Julian claims to have sworn off the 'cid and wants to talk about the poll tax, and Roy Harper's hat hangs in semi-retirement/suspended animation. So where does that leave the state of good old-fashioned English lunacy in 1991? Well, it's all in the capable hands of our lad Robyn Hitchcock -- and we can't think of a safer/more dangerous (take your pick) place for it. His last studio outing, Queen Elvis, was masterfully triumphant, squeezing the Hitch's patent weirdness inside Pop structures where it could only seep out every so often -- and only then utterly subvert everything. Sometimes on Perspex Island, the two change places: all the weird stuff clambering out of the closet, taking over completely and pushing the Pop stuff back into the woodwork. This wolf-in-sheeps'-clothing approach is precisely the heart of what makes Robyn lovably Robyn: even a straight-ahead little Pop ditty like "So You Think You're In Love" ultimately gets skewed by his eerie, trembling, displaced warble. In other realms, "Vegetation And Dimes" is a jagged, dark rhythmic workout that's a distant soul-cousin to Julian Cope's "Drowning, Not Waving". It's a similarly weird sprawl of obtuse words that recalls the days when day-glo Rolls Royces cruised the dim, winding streets; when Lord Sutch spoke out in Parliament in favor of public nudism; and purveyors of unbridled eccentricity and sheer inspired lunacy ran amok throughout the jewel of England set in the silver sea.
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