Yip, yip, yip (yep, yep, yep)
The positive vibrations of Robyn Hitchcock’s odd genius
PREVIEW
ROBYN HITCHCOCK
Calgary Folk Music Festival
July 27 & 28
Prince’s Island Park
Ever since critics started writing about the ever-eccentric Robyn Hitchcock, they’ve compared his engaging performances to the potent musings of artists like John Lennon, Lou Reed, Captain Beefheart and, probably most notably, original Pink Floyd space-cadet Syd Barrett.
Hitchcock’s first band, The Soft Boys, has received much praise over the last 25 years for its strutting rock ’n’ roll stance that always embraced grand harmonies and the group has had a significant effect on the music of many other bands, among them The Flaming Lips, Yo La Tengo and even big market essentials R.E.M.
"The early Soft Boys had a penchant for 'tight' arrangements," Hitchcock says. "Before that, I wrote a lot of unwieldy songs that died before they could get out into the open air. I've made up so many songs – the ones that have survived are solid. Just as medieval cathedrals are still standing in Europe, but all the hovels are long rotted away..."
After The Soft Boys disintegrated, Robyn had the fortune of being able to carry on his creative quirks in a solo career that provided an abundance of tongue-in-cheek smirks and fuming schizophrenia (check out the madness of 1993's "The Yip Song," a frenetic hip-hip-hurray about death caused by cancer). His stunning voice has always had a caustic force behind it, almost as if he’s sneering and laughing all at once. He borrowed the erratic ramblings and high-pitched whines of Lennon and Barrett and shaped them into an even more potent sound. As the years go by, he’s finding now that his sly delivery seems to be almost leading itself.
"I think I always go where it takes me," Hitchcock says. "If it sounds good and reverberant in the room, it takes me that much further. That's another reason why they built those cathedrals – the reverb in them made the choirs sound unearthly. You can't sing squat in a wattle hut. Over the years I've lost a bit (of sound) at the top and gained a bit at the bottom – which is the reverse of what's happened to the Isle Of Wight," he obscurely adds.
This last obscure comment refers back to something that he discussed in Storefront Hitchcock a 1998 performance film directed by Jonathan Demme. In the film, Hitchcock explains that the bottom of the Isle of Wight is disappearing at a rate of 10 feet per year. The result is that misdirected ghosts are actually now levitating somewhere high in the air, wandering where sheer cliffs used to be.
Hitchcock’s storytelling tries to convinces listeners of the possibility of the incomprehensible. In the aforementioned performance, he delights the audience with tales of NASA astronauts having their spines stacked until they’re giants and takes time to extensively construct the way a blown out candle relates to minataurs that swaddle humans in duct tape and launch them into a reverse gravity fall. Entirely odd, yes, but his explanation is simple.
"I just like telling stories to people," he claims. "I also feel that my stories onstage complement the songs – not literally, but they help the audience to see the song, as well as hear it.... Mystery is still a spotlight, it's just a subtle one."
HITCHCOCK ON DYLAN
After spending years fencing with rock history's oddball lyricists, Hitchcock has finally taken the time to ruminate on yet another one that's a tad more blunt in its emphasis. The legendary Bob Dylan's sombre songs have probably helped to straighten out the former Soft Boys's constantly veering ideas. In the liner notes for his new release, Robyn Sings, a double album of live Dylan covers, Hitchcock points out that he is not interpreting the songs here, he's merely singing them.
"Robyn Sings isn't a Dylan tribute," he says. "It's an acknowledgement of the part of me that Dylan unwittingly shaped. A kind of ode to my own compost."
Hitchcock notes that Dylan altered the way he observes both himself and the world around him. It may have made him a tad more cynical and negative at times, but it forces him to consistently learn new things as a person and writer.
For those always wanting to know what the term "slow-burning" meant, Robyn Sings is heavy-handed enough to tear the sails from any wistful mind. The first disc starts with Robyn stating, "This is my favourite song. This is why I started writing songs," before launching into a beautifully earnest version of the Dylan classic "Visions of Johanna" from Blonde on Blonde. As Hitchcock shrewdly sings the tune, it’s almost as if he’s actually savouring the very taste of the sounds coming from his mouth.
"I love those words," says Hitchcock. "The whole of my songwriting career could sink without trace into 'Visions of Johanna' and drown happily. And I know I'm good! Ain't no modest mouse!"
Although this song may represent Hitchcock’s most sanctimonious ego, he betters himself later on with a delicate version of "Not Dark Yet" and a cheeky epic narrative on "Desolation Row." On the second disc, he cranks it out with a full band on a rabble- rousing re-creation of Dylan’s 1966 Albert Hall concert, complete with the (however mis-timed) historically-accurate shouts of "Judas!"
Really, though, it only makes sense that Hitchcock is impressed by the Dylan mystique. In March 2001, Pink Floyd's David Gilmour unearthed a previously unheard demo by Syd Barrett from the early ’60s called "The Bob Dylan Blues." It's incredible how those influences just keep spinning around.
"Well, Dylan was an influence on all my influences. There's probably a marketing term for that: 'Primary Sourcing' or something soft-target-ish," he says. "Sooner or later our dust will mingle and then people may think I came before him. Then history will forget us altogether. Or they will build hybrid effigies of us all in the giant Cathedrals on Mars." He then goes on to elaborate a bizarre tale in which dinosaurs on skateboards pay homage to the icon by dripping wax at its feet with nitrogen candles. Growing from these solidified puddles are tiny wax mushrooms wearing Dylan shades. Of course. |
