kleph
05-03-2006, 12:51 AM
"My contention is, however – and it's a bloody obvious one – that beneath our civilized glazing, we are all deviants, all alone, and all peculiar. This flies in the face of mass marketing, but I’m sticking with it." – Robyn Hitchcock
No matter how many reassurances you get from the horrible mediocrity foisted upon us all by television, the truth is that the world is a much stranger place than any of us ever imagined. We spend most of our lives being told not to pay attention to the glorious weirdness and, instead, enjoy the claustrophobic comfort of numbing conformity.
Robyn Hitchcock intends to bring this sad state of affairs to an end. For more than three decades his music has worked to nudge us all out of that horrible complacency (or simply shove us wholeheartedly, if given the chance) and force you to see the strange and bizarre nature of this world and, if you can, accept it for its terrible beauty.
In the late 1970s this towering, gangly Brit joined with a few mates in Cambridge and created one of the oddest bands ever, the Soft Boys. Instead of opting for the primal and staunchly lowbrow abrasiveness much of punk embraced, they kept their intellectual underpinnings intact and then fused them with a loopy psychedelic ethos inherited from Syd Barrett.
Even from this early beginning you can see how, musically, Hitchcock probably owes the most to the Byrds with a healthy dollop of Captan Beefheart thrown in. (He later did a blistering cover of "Eight Miles High" that is only eclipsed by Hüsker’s Dü’s, seminal take on McGwinn’s famous tune)
The Soft Boys put together several interesting albums but reached their apex with the epic Underwater Moonlight, which has proven to be one of the most influential recordings of the late 1970s. Although you may never have heard of it, I assure you, quite a few bands you hold dear found it to be a revelation. After the Soft Boys broke up Hitchcock used the pieces to put together his long-standing band The Egyptians that has been with him most of his solo career.
By the mid-1980s, Hitchcock was the elder statesman of the alternative scene. You simply were not cool unless you were intimately familiar with his work. (College radio joke from 1986 or so: How many members of R.E.M. does it take to replace a light bulb? Two. One to change the light bulb and another to put on the Robyn Hitchcock record) Never one to follow any crowd, that kept me from dabbling in the man’s work until relatively late. A situation I later regretted dearly. Because Hitchcock was one of the few artists whose work more than measured up to this reputation.
While his music has undergone a profound transformation across the ensuing decades, the idiosyncrasies and core values that have been his calling card were there from the start. From the Soft Boy’s first effort, Can of Bees to Hitchcock’s most recent albums, you find creeping insects, dead wives and other disturbing characters haunting the lyrics from pretty much the start.
The point of the weirdness is to show how well it fits with everything around it. The song ain’t what’s weird, mate. It’s the world that it reflects that is. In lesser hands this would fall apart but this strange undertaking works for Hitchcock because he never falls for the trap of oddness for oddness’ sake.
What Hitchcock understands is that his terrible strange honesty is the only real option given what is at stake. Because the truth is that until you come face to face with the horrible unflinching reality of your own mortality, you simply cannot understand the poetry of your own life. The best you can do is revel in the zero-sum-game of narcissistic hedonism that, in the end, is only a faster path to destruction.
Although this truth lies at the heart of most of his songs, it is most clearly evident as part of his extemporaneous comments between songs when you see him perform live. They have a strange stream-of-consciousness to them that is as horrifying as humorous. Its always interesting to hear the audience titter along – laughing out loud to let everyone around them know they got the joke but completely missing the point that it was supposed to be disturbing as well. (His riff on The Church of Carcasses in Jonathan Demme’s pristine concert film, Storefront Hitchcock, is the perfect example of this).
Musically this all works because he never lets the songwriting suffer for the sake of the message. Typically the disturbing revelations of the lyrics are supported by impeccable songwriting and pristine guitar work. Some of Hitchcock’s best efforts have come when he has stripped his sound and songwriting down to the most basic elements and let them stand alone. This is evident on albums like Eye and Queen Elvis.
So where does the new initiate begin? There are several dozen records the man has recorded to select from, not to mention various collections and greatest hits offerings. Truth is, a great deal of his recordings have a catchy enjoyability anyone can find accessible but, that said, there are aspects of his work that may take some getting used to.
I still feel Element of Light is the most insightful, nuanced and powerful offering in the broad compendium of this musician's almost three decades of work. It also features my favorite song, "Airscape." It bears the raw enthusiasm that marked his early work with the legendary Soft Boys as well as the profound insightfulness (and drop dead beautiful songwriting) that he continues to create today.
No matter how many reassurances you get from the horrible mediocrity foisted upon us all by television, the truth is that the world is a much stranger place than any of us ever imagined. We spend most of our lives being told not to pay attention to the glorious weirdness and, instead, enjoy the claustrophobic comfort of numbing conformity.
Robyn Hitchcock intends to bring this sad state of affairs to an end. For more than three decades his music has worked to nudge us all out of that horrible complacency (or simply shove us wholeheartedly, if given the chance) and force you to see the strange and bizarre nature of this world and, if you can, accept it for its terrible beauty.
In the late 1970s this towering, gangly Brit joined with a few mates in Cambridge and created one of the oddest bands ever, the Soft Boys. Instead of opting for the primal and staunchly lowbrow abrasiveness much of punk embraced, they kept their intellectual underpinnings intact and then fused them with a loopy psychedelic ethos inherited from Syd Barrett.
Even from this early beginning you can see how, musically, Hitchcock probably owes the most to the Byrds with a healthy dollop of Captan Beefheart thrown in. (He later did a blistering cover of "Eight Miles High" that is only eclipsed by Hüsker’s Dü’s, seminal take on McGwinn’s famous tune)
The Soft Boys put together several interesting albums but reached their apex with the epic Underwater Moonlight, which has proven to be one of the most influential recordings of the late 1970s. Although you may never have heard of it, I assure you, quite a few bands you hold dear found it to be a revelation. After the Soft Boys broke up Hitchcock used the pieces to put together his long-standing band The Egyptians that has been with him most of his solo career.
By the mid-1980s, Hitchcock was the elder statesman of the alternative scene. You simply were not cool unless you were intimately familiar with his work. (College radio joke from 1986 or so: How many members of R.E.M. does it take to replace a light bulb? Two. One to change the light bulb and another to put on the Robyn Hitchcock record) Never one to follow any crowd, that kept me from dabbling in the man’s work until relatively late. A situation I later regretted dearly. Because Hitchcock was one of the few artists whose work more than measured up to this reputation.
While his music has undergone a profound transformation across the ensuing decades, the idiosyncrasies and core values that have been his calling card were there from the start. From the Soft Boy’s first effort, Can of Bees to Hitchcock’s most recent albums, you find creeping insects, dead wives and other disturbing characters haunting the lyrics from pretty much the start.
The point of the weirdness is to show how well it fits with everything around it. The song ain’t what’s weird, mate. It’s the world that it reflects that is. In lesser hands this would fall apart but this strange undertaking works for Hitchcock because he never falls for the trap of oddness for oddness’ sake.
What Hitchcock understands is that his terrible strange honesty is the only real option given what is at stake. Because the truth is that until you come face to face with the horrible unflinching reality of your own mortality, you simply cannot understand the poetry of your own life. The best you can do is revel in the zero-sum-game of narcissistic hedonism that, in the end, is only a faster path to destruction.
Although this truth lies at the heart of most of his songs, it is most clearly evident as part of his extemporaneous comments between songs when you see him perform live. They have a strange stream-of-consciousness to them that is as horrifying as humorous. Its always interesting to hear the audience titter along – laughing out loud to let everyone around them know they got the joke but completely missing the point that it was supposed to be disturbing as well. (His riff on The Church of Carcasses in Jonathan Demme’s pristine concert film, Storefront Hitchcock, is the perfect example of this).
Musically this all works because he never lets the songwriting suffer for the sake of the message. Typically the disturbing revelations of the lyrics are supported by impeccable songwriting and pristine guitar work. Some of Hitchcock’s best efforts have come when he has stripped his sound and songwriting down to the most basic elements and let them stand alone. This is evident on albums like Eye and Queen Elvis.
So where does the new initiate begin? There are several dozen records the man has recorded to select from, not to mention various collections and greatest hits offerings. Truth is, a great deal of his recordings have a catchy enjoyability anyone can find accessible but, that said, there are aspects of his work that may take some getting used to.
I still feel Element of Light is the most insightful, nuanced and powerful offering in the broad compendium of this musician's almost three decades of work. It also features my favorite song, "Airscape." It bears the raw enthusiasm that marked his early work with the legendary Soft Boys as well as the profound insightfulness (and drop dead beautiful songwriting) that he continues to create today.