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Suspended in a peculiar time—a palindromic date falling one yr and a day after his most up-to-date launch, reflective, instrumental album Life After Infinity, and two months earlier than his subsequent artifact, memoir 1967: How I Obtained There And Why I By no means Left, comes out—Robyn Hitchcock predictably ignored his quick previous and future at World Cafe Stay in favor of a set that plumbed a deeper and extra fractured historical past.
Hitchcock waded by way of the primordial muck to pluck 16 gems from the musically fertile, morally bankrupt decade Margaret Thatcher held in her iron fist—an period neatly delineated by the Smooth Boys’ sophomore album, 1980’s Underwater Moonlight (represented by “Queen Of Eyes” and “I Wanna Destroy You”), at one finish, and his 1990 solo outing, Eye (from which he drew “Aquarium,” “Cynthia Masks” and “Queen Elvis”), on the different. A sonic archaeologist is perhaps tempted to excavate every vessel and study its parts: textures impressed by Syd Barrett, Nick Drake and the Byrds; materials crafted within the firm of erstwhile Egyptians Morris Windsor and Andy Metcalfe, amongst others; the pure erosions and accretions that come from performing the identical songs alone and with a shifting forged of collaborators throughout the years; and, not least, the distinctive baggage dropped at Hitchcock’s idiosyncratic lyrics by every listener.
It’s this collective unconscious—his, theirs, yours and mine—that infuses reside efficiency with a lot of its which means, and that appeared very true at this sold-out, seated present. In any case, my “My Spouse And My Lifeless Spouse” and your “My Spouse And My Lifeless Spouse” could also be very dissimilar creatures, although corporeally equivalent. “Madonna Of The Wasps” carries a definite sting relying on whether or not you concentrate on the hereness of Hitchcock’s craving voice and nimble fingers or the inherent heresy of Peter Buck’s absence, even all this time later. “Queen Elvis” revealed a brand new face following an introduction that dislodged recollections of the disgraced Morrissey, whereas “Balloon Man” landed in a special mild for these carrying Bangles T-shirts. (Which may have simply been me, however I didn’t look too carefully at strangers’ torsos.)
One of the shifting moments was Hitchcock’s reclamation of “Century,” a long-forgotten tune that languished as an unsatisfactory demo for 17 years or so earlier than seeing a small semblance of the sunshine of day as a bonus observe on the second reissue of Eye in 2007, solely to develop into a staple of this tour 17 years later. Different highlights got here within the requests he entertained, together with You & Oblivion rarity “Surgical procedure” and a flippant but affectionate dedication of Perspex Island’s “So You Assume You’re In Love,” the one variety of the evening that was written, recorded and launched within the Nineties, the last decade wherein I found Hitchcock and many of the different music that sustains me—the last decade I by no means actually left.
Amid all of Hitchcock’s amusing intros and more and more existential directives to the soundman, his stellar guitar strains and his skill to exist within the second with us at the same time as fragments of our hearts and brains stay, stubbornly, in 1967, 1992 or some alternate timeline altogether, the tune that burrowed deepest in my ears, adopted me house and slipped out of my mouth for greater than per week after the present was the final one of many evening: “One Lengthy Pair Of Eyes.” Was it how beautiful the music sounded within the second? Or the dialog instantly afterward, when a buddy who hadn’t crossed paths with Hitchcock in years spoke of his reference to the singer and the tune? Or the serendipity that my partner had the identical melody caught in his head, and we saved playfully volleying it forwards and backwards for days? The entire above, I’m positive.
Although each performer and viewers appeared most hooked up to sacred relics from the ’80s, Hitchcock appeared significantly animated when enjoying the setlist’s six Twenty first-century entries: back-to-back tunes from 2006’s Ole! Tarantula, the title observe and “Journey Rocket Ship”; “Mad Shelley’s Letterbox,” from his self-titled 2017 report; and “The Shuffle Man,” “The Sir Tommy Shovel,” and “The Man Who Loves The Rain” from 2022’s Shufflemania! (For many Philly followers, this was the primary likelihood to see Hitchcock play songs from his final non-instrumental album, since his solely look on the town to market it was a brief, unpublicized set opening for his accomplice, Emma Swift, in World Cafe Stay’s smaller upstairs venue throughout sport 5 of the 2022 World Collection between the Phillies and the Houston Astros.)
Although it evidently represents a smaller a part of the gang’s communal creativeness—a hazard of getting a loyal, ageing fanbase with an affinity for the music that outlined their youth—that his comparatively latest work was so very nicely obtained is proof that Hitchcock is much from exhausting his trove of influences and experiences after which alchemizing them into songs nobody else might write.
—M.J. Positive; photographs by Chris Sikich
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