The New York Times
February 7, 1992
When Lyrics Take Flight For Fancy
by Karen Schoemer
"There couldn't be a tree outside the window, could there?" asked Robyn Hitchcock. It was a mild winter afternoon, and the tall windows of the singer and songwriter's Philadelphia hotel room were flung wide open to let in the unseasonably warm air. Something was casting treelike light patterns on the wall -- like those cast by rustling leaves in the heat of summer. Mr. Hitchcock rose and walked over to the window. The shadows, it turned out, were caused by nothing more than the undulating white curtains wafting in the breeze. Mr. Hitchcock seemed a trifle disappointed to look out the window and see only sky and distant rooftops.
The room was on the 20th floor of the hotel, so there couldn't very well have been a tree outside the window. But in Mr. Hitchcock's universe, almost anything is possible. His songs are alive with fantastic detail. A man shaped like a balloon walks up Sixth Avenue and bursts. A fellow's dead wife shows up one afternoon for tea -- then scolds him when he serves it with sugar. Insects and fish, flora and fauna take on human characteristics (and vice versa). For him, a leafy tree growing outside a 20th-story window in the dead of winter would be positively pedestrian.
Eloquent with a turn of phrase, gifted with a Beatlesque Pop hook, Mr. Hitchcock is that rare and necessary musician who blesses his work with a touch of genuine artistry. At his best, his songs reveal a delicate, personal beauty seldom heard in Pop music. Mr. Hitchcock has been recording and releasing albums for nearly 15 years: in the late-1970s and early-'80s with a group based in Cambridge, England and called The Soft Boys; and ever since as a solo artist.
Although his songs seldom reach the Rock mainstream and he self-deprecatingly refers to himself as an "exotic little cult figure", his influence on the college radio circuit is renowned (and he claims a fiercely loyal following). Tonight he performs in New York with his band, The Egyptians. Its two members -- Morris Windsor on drums and Andy Metcalfe on bass and piano -- have been playing with him on and off since the late-'70's.
Dreams in '60s Clothes
Mr. Hitchcock's lyrics require a slight leap of faith in that they ask the listener to see the world on his peculiar metaphorical terms. He strings together surrealistic details like rapid-fire dream images; then dresses them in 1960s-inspired Guitar Pop derived from masters like The Beatles, The Beach Boys, and Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd.
"I like things in miniature -- to create a little miniature world," he said. "New York City in a teardrop. The closer you look at it, the more things you see -- which is my definition of Psychedelia. It's the difference between an etching and a poster for Kentucky Fried Chicken. The poster looks great from 200 yards away, whereas an etching you couldn't even see until it's half a foot from your face. Our stuff has to be examined closely. That's probably one of the reasons it's not massively successful. It's like a battleship made out of matchboxes compared to a battleship made out of iron and steel.
Mr. Hitchcock's latest album, Perspex Island (A&M), is his most direct and accessible yet. (Perspex is a British version of plexiglass.) His narratives are based on the more conventional men and women instead of frogs and tadpoles. And with much of the guitar work supplied by Peter Buck of R.E.M., the songs' melodies are more consistently catchy.
The new songs, he added, "are less rarefied, less precious (precious in the sense that you'll break it if you're not careful -- like some elegant porcelain beast that has to be transported from place to place in cotton wool by men with very, very delicate fingers and manicured accents)."
Nevertheless, Mr. Hitchcock's imagination hasn't dimmed. Asked about a song called "Madonna Of The Wasps" from his 1990 album Queen Elvis, he improvised a tale. "It's a woman who's turned into a wasp from the waist down, like a mermaid," he said. "I pictured her hovering outside the room, occasionally jutting her abdomen through the window and jabbing at this bearded, emaciated artist in a small white room in northern France. He was terrified of her. He didn't know whether she'd put her head in the window and give him a kiss or put her stinger in the window and gouge his abdomen with her poison. But he was compelled to open the window every time she came and hovered outside.
"One day, he was able to get out of his room. It was winter and the frosts were coming. And he saw the madonna dead by the side of the road. She was like a wrecked plane. She was hollowed out. He could see her fuselage. She wasn't even half-human any more: it was like a figurehead with the paint knocked off. And he suddenly sees that this thing that has been enthralling him (or terrifying him) no longer has any power over him -- and in death is nothing more than a battered figurehead."
Mr. Hitchcock rose and walked back to the window. There was still nothing outside. But it was impossible to tell what he was seeing with his mind's eye.
COYPRIGHT NOTICE