Goldmine
October 11, 1996
Three Gulps Of Moss Elixir
Moss Elixir
Warner Brothers (9 46302)
By Fred Mills
Getting right to the meat of the matter: this is Bob's finest hour. At least the finest one in a prawn's age, considering how sterile, overproduced, and -- quite frankly -- boring the last two albums (1991's Perspex Island, and 1993's Respect were. That pair of records, recorded with The Egyptians, was subjected to the none-too-subtle pressure of A&M records for Hitchcock to have a radio hit. And while each contained its share of typically cracked Hitchcock gems, both were substandard when judged against such classic outings as Element Of Light, Fegmania!, and of course the man's Soft Boys period.
Everything clicks this time around -- the stripped-down musicianship (the songs contain, at most, guitar/bass/violin, with the occasional drums, tambourine, sax and organ), the vocals (Hitchcock's voice has an undeniable warmth, and here it almost sounds like it's in the room with you, not to mention some sublime harmony overdubs to make the room even brighter), and of course the wordplay (more on that in a minute).
If you were to single out just a few songs here...
Lead track "Sinister But She Was Happy" is about as buoyant as they come, a jogging bassline and plangent guitar motif tweaked ever-so-optimistically by Deni Bonet's fiddle-scrapes and chuckles. Or the all-acousitc "Heliotrope" which, with its slightly Countryish, reverb/twang chord progression, focuses the ears upon Hitchcock's voice (in turn given just a hint of spectral echo plus a ghostly, upper-register overdub). One of the few "produced" tunes is "Beautiful Queen", whose parallel backwards/surf guitars give it a shimmery, psychedelic feel. As it progresses through a series of time-signature shifts, it's hard not to think "Beatles" (Sgt. Pepper's- or Magical Mystery Tour-era -- check those stately trumpets and the ascending "aahhh" vocal harmonies). Suffice it to say that on this album, all tunes are created equal and all stand up proudly for inspection. It's as if Hitchcock, freed from his previous record contract (and of The Egyptians, it must be said), could finally write and arrange in a vacuum -- and with only his personal expectations to meet. Lucky for us Warner Brothers caught wind. If the label can't turn the Byrds-like "Alright, Yeah" or the straight-forward-but-just-quirky-enough-for-Alternative "I Am Not Me" into radio hits it should fire the entire marketing department.
Of course, longtime Hitchcock fans expect more than just friendly-sounding tunes. There's an old saying among songwriters: when you're sitting at the kitchen table scratching on a pad of paper working out your lyrics, don't answer the doorbell because it's like being caught walking around the house in your dirtiest, most tattered underwear. If true, then Hitchcock must wear silk Calvins all day long. Lesser beings would kill to pen a line like "Basically, she was a Jeanne Moreau type/Sinister but she was happy", which tells you more about the character in the song than an entire verse dedicated to physical and psychological analysis. In "Devil's Radio" Hitchcock brings an utterly fresh spin to a stale subject (Rush Limbaugh, G. Gordon Liddy, and their sorry broadcast ilk). First, he throws out some goofy-but-memorable rhymes: "Darlin'/You don't have to call me/Stalin/Or even Mao Tse-tung/'cause I'm far too young". (Say it aloud). This is followed by a succinct description of the blather that comes over the airwaves: "It went, 'Na na na na na na, I'm the Devil's Radio'". Then the coupe de grace is delivered, cheerily but firmly: "Kate said, 'The flowers of intolerance and hatred/Are blooming kind of early/This Year/Someone's been watering them.'". It's like Richard Pryor once pointed out: you get them laughing and you get their attention, then you catch them off-guard with what you're really trying to get across.
Hitchcock doesn't fail to paint his patented, surreal, anglepoise lamp-populated landscapes, either. "DeChirico Street" finds the song's narrator "followed home by a weighing machine on DeChirico Street ... The conductor's name was Milo/As the bus went past he hissed 'Flesh Head!' ... A lizard's tail slithered in the crack on DeChirico Street".
And so on. Is it any wonder folks once suspected Hitchcock of manufacturing LSD part-time in his flat? Although the smart money was always on his full-time gig as incurable -- if slightly eccentric -- romantic. In "Beautiful Queen" some of the most delicious lines float by: "Got a ripe tomato here in ecstasy/Got a little apple in your eye"; "You're the warm creation/Of a sigh"; "I'm not afraid to be the only person on the planet...In the world with you".
One constant for Hitchcock has been his willingness to toss around vivid images and the sound of words for the sake of seeing how they interact after colliding. Perhaps the mark of a skilled writer is this treating of language's components as living cretures. Many authors refer to their works as children. If so, then Hitchcock's one of the giants.
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