San Diego Union-Tribune
July 22, 1999
Robyn Hitchcock Secures His Place In Rock History
Jewels For Sophia
Robyn Hitchcock
Warner Bros.
**½
by David L. Coddon
Robyn Hitchcock -- now, more than ever.
Even when he cuts an album that's less-than-stellar -- and his latest, Jewels For Sophia is less-than-stellar -- the stubbornly iconoclastic Hitchcock strikes a blow for aural unpredictability and damn-the-critics lyrical disorder. In a summer when Motley Crue's on tour again and kids are worshiping at the altar of the Backstreet Boys, the West Londoner who penned "The Man With The Lightbulb Head" and "Take Your Knife Out Of My Back" is making music for the chosen few: those tuned into the Hitchcock Zeitgeist, or those who'd merely like to be.
As whatever's left of Alternative Rock radio panders more and more to 14-year-old boys in size-XL T-shirts, Hitchcock's supremely quirky songs -- past and present -- are finding themselves homeless. Maybe that's why director Jonathan Demme, a fan, chose to film Hitchcock performing an edgy acoustic show in a Manhattan storefront a couple of years ago. (The film, Storefront Hitchcock, has yet to screen in San Diego.) Demme realizes, as do enduring fans of The Soft Boys and, later on, of The Egyptians, that Robyn Hitchcock has earned significant stature on the outer fringe of Rock history.
It's in the neighborhood of the lunatic fringe, where, sad to say, Syd Barrett resides. The boy-priest -- and martyr -- of '60s Psychedelia (and, of course, co-founder of Pink Floyd) was a hero of the young Hitchcock's. You could credibly argue that Hitchcock has enjoyed the career that Barrett might have had: making wry, adventurous, acidic records for an indulgent cult following. (An even remotely sane Barrett certainly would have eschewed the Arena Rock destiny the Floyd chose in his wake.)
Hitchcock's disciples have needed every iota of their indulgence, for his road from the dawn of The Soft Boys in 1977 (and the underrated debut album A Can Of Bees) to the dawn of a new millennium has been a circuitous one.
The bull's-eyes (Fegmania!, with The Egyptians; the solo work Eye) have been accompanied by some misfires (Groovy Decay in '82 comes to mind); and Hitchcock's lyrical calisthenics can be as frustrating as they are entertaining.
Lately, though, Hitchcock's had momentum: Moss Elixir (which featured "Beautiful Queen," "You And Oblivion", and the scathing "Filthy Bird") and its subsequent outtakes LP, Mossy Liquor, both in '96; and the soundtrack to Storefront Hitchcock, released last October. (It includes a cover by Hitchcock -- a deft guitarist -- of "The Wind Cries Mary" by Jimi Hendrix, an even better guitarist.)
The 12-track Jewels For Sophia (13, if you count the two-part curiosity tacked onto the end: Hitchcock singing over what sounds like someone playing "Chopsticks", and an echoing ditty about Gene Hackman) was recorded in multiple sessions (in Seattle, in L.A., and in London), and not surprisingly, it's wildly uneven.
The Seattle recordings feature guest Peter Buck (R.E.M.) on electric 12-string and include one of the album's high points: the rousing Lennon-like oddity "Viva Sea-Tac", a Hitchcock concert staple for some time. Either Microsoft or Frasier could heighten their hip quotients with lines like "Coming and going/It has to be Boeing", and the reprise "They've got the best computers and coffee and smack". The straight-ahead rocker "Elizabeth Jade", also from the Seattle sessions, has Pop appeal. But the muddled title track is a disappointment.
Though each is sexually charged, neither "Dark Princess" (its chorus is annoying) nor "You've Got A Sweet Mouth On You, Baby" (Hitchcock's vocal noodling discounts the tune to a studio lark) qualify as jewels -- for Sophia, or anyone else. Then there's the bizarre, metaphorical "Antwoman", with its say-what? refrain "Being just contaminates the void".
But "Sally Was A Legend", with Kimberley Rew (ex-Soft Boys, Katrina And The Waves) on guitar and harmonies, is Retro Rock at its most buoyant; "The Cheese Alarm" is a wonderfully snide comment on society's haves and have-nots (not to mention the pros and cons of Gruyere, Stilton, and Jarlsberg); and the sparse, doo-wop-ish "Mexican God" may well be Hitchcock's own "Positively 4th Street" ("The horror of you floats so close by my window/At least when I die, your memory will too".)
Grant-Lee Phillips (of Grant Lee Buffalo) provides harmony on the airy ballad "I Feel Beautiful" (from the L.A. sessions), as well as bass and "antvoices" (say the liner notes) on "Antwoman". And that's Aloke Dutta at the tablas on "The Cheese Alarm".
Underutilized throughout is Hitchcock's guitar. He gets to play electric and slide at Punk speed on "NASA Clapping", but that's an exception.
A live rendering of "No, I Don't Remember Guildford" was a highlight of Storefront Hitchcock. Its studio version here, two minutes shorter, is just as finely nuanced, and as affectingly sung: "Did something happen?/The sky just blackened/Now there's a butterfly on my face/And I'm a number in a drawer".
Look for an outtakes follow-up to Jewels For Sophia, perhaps in the fall.
In the meantime, put this in your jewel box with all your sentimental baubles and break it out when the CD player's empty and you're not feeling sentimental at all.
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