![]() ![]() In a surprising move several years later, Hitchcock did it his way, by putting out the revisionist Groovy Decoy. “Grooving on an Inner Plane” blends an arch rap-styled vocal into a fluid groove with stirring results. “Fifty Two Stations” stunningly captures the alternation of rage, resignation and hope that follows the failure of love, while “St. The result was the overambitious, rhythm-driven Groovy Decay (which employs, among other session hands, future Waterboy Anthony Thistlethwaite on sax and ex-Gang of Four bassist Sara Lee). Hoping to get away from a standard guitar-based sound, he got Steve Hillage (ex-Gong) to produce. Hitchcock’s second album wasn’t such a smooth ride. The 1995 reissue (part of Rhino’s nine-disc program to rehabilitate and consolidate Hitchcock’s back catalogue) adds three tracks from later singles and two outtakes: a thuggish alternate version of the album’s unnerving admission of obsession, “I Watch the Cars,” and the proto-hip-hop of the next record’s “Grooving on a Inner Plane.” Using his ex-bandmates for backing, Black Snake Diamond Röle gets Hitchcock’s second career off to a good start, beginning pointedly with the jaunty “The Man Who Invented Himself” and then taking a bewildering (but catchy) turn with “Brenda’s Iron Sledge.” He offers a sardonic knock at authority in “Do Policemen Sing?” (which features a chorus like a frenzied hail of blows) and a melodic, cracked-crystal ballad, “Acid Bird,” whose mood and production could stand proud next to “Eight Miles High.” Alternate takes on emotion - “Meat” (all brash) and “Love” (all heart) - finish off each side. (That group’s three “official” albums - A Can of Bees, Underwater Moonlight and Invisible Hits - were reissued in 1992 by Rykodisc, followed the next year by a two-CD classics/rarities collection, The Soft Boys 1976-81.) Not truly a rock musician and too arch to be a folkie, Hitchcock has recorded both solo and with a group ever since dissolving the influential and offbeat new wave band, the Soft Boys, in 1980. At his best, however, he wields bizarre imagery brilliantly to make stealth runs at life’s most challenging problems, elevating the mundane to provocative art. At his worst, when his penchant for self-amusement runs away with him (as it sometimes does), Hitchcock can be far too self-conscious in his pretense of eccentricity, making nonsense seem equally glib and random. Displaying a keen sense of irony as well as a dry, put-on (and put-upon) wit, Hitchcock’s creations - in song, story, graphics and film - erect puzzling layers of incredibility that stymie presumptions about motivation or meaning. While he often gets compared to poor old Syd Barrett (an acknowledged influence), this London native has closer relations outside the music world: Rene Magritte (logic-defying juxtapositions), Marcel Duchamp (dada absurdity), Edward Lear (whimsical, grotesque fabrications), Charles Addams (gloomy, cartoonish venom). Robyn Hitchcock is one of pop’s great surrealists, an artist whose work has the appearance of familiarity yet none of its reassurance. Sex, Food, Death.and Tarantulas EP (Yep Roc) 2007.Live at the Cambridge Film Festival (UK Strange Fruit) 1998.The Kershaw Sessions (UK BBC Radio Recordings) 1994.Give It to the Thoth Boys: Live Oddities (BL1) 1993.Element of Light (Glass Fish/Relativity) 1986 (Rhino) 1995 (Yep Roc) 2008.I Often Dream of Trains in New York (Yep Roc) 2009.Shadow Cat (UK Sartorial) 2008 (Yep Roc) 2009.Storefront Hitchcock (Warner Bros.) 1998.Uncorrected Personality Traits (Rhino) 1997.Royal Queen Albert & Beautiful Homer (Warner Bros.) 1997. ![]() Mossy Liquor (Outtakes and Prototypes) (Warner Bros.) 1996.Invisible Hitchcock (Glass Fish/Relativity) 1986 (Rhino) 1995.Exploding in Silence EP (Relativity) 1986.Groovy Decoy (Glass Fish/Relativity) 1985.I Often Dream of Trains (UK Midnight Music) 1984 (Glass Fish / Relativity) 1986 (Rhino) 1995 (Yep Roc) 2007.Groovy Decay (UK Albion) 1982 (online) (Yep Roc) 2009.Black Snake Diamond Röle (UK Armageddon) 1981 (Glass Fish/Relativity) 1986 (Rhino) 1995 (Yep Roc) 2007. ![]()
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