Having turned 60 in March 2013, none-more-English singer-songwriter Robyn Hitchcock is surely about due for installation at national treasure-dom’s top table.
Coming to prominence in the late 1970s with The Soft Boys, Hitchcock soon started to launch a prolific solo career. Influenced by the likes of Bob Dylan, John Lennon and Syd Barrett, Hitchcock’s lyrics tend to include surrealism, comedic elements, characterisations of English eccentrics, and melancholy depictions of everyday life.
Robyn Hitchcock | Strawberries Dress
https://youtube.com/watch?v=lRaH-rtv4fo
2010’s Propellor Time found Robyn Hitchcock basking in the anything-goes, notebook-clearing nature of largely minimalist offerings like Eye and I Often Dream of Trains, allowing the pop acumen of his recent work with the Venus 3 (Peter Buck of R.E.M., Scott McCaughey, and Bill Rieflin), all of whom contributed, to beat the more abstract elements of the songs into submission.
2013’s Love from London, recorded in an East London bedroom and released just days after Hitchcock’s 60th birthday, retains some of its predecessor’s penchant for wanderlust, but is altogether a much trippier beast, swapping out the acoustic foundation for a snappier pop/rock engine that harkens back to more propulsive outings like Element of Light and Fegmania!
Robyn Hitchcock | Harry’s Song
https://youtube.com/watch?v=HhckUW45tBo
The piano-led, dirge-like “Harry’s Song” starts things off on an ominous note, but it’s a cloud that soon dissipates with the arrival of the playful and airy “Be Still” and the reliably absurd “Stupefied,” both of which wouldn’t have sounded out of place on 1988’s Globe of Frogs. Love from London is at its best when the light and dark are forced to spend time together, as is the case on the album’s two strongest cuts, the beautiful “Death & Love” and the heady, Flaming Lips-inspired, psych-pop closer “The End of Time.”
That being said, we are looking forward to Robyn Hitchcocks’s first Berlin concert in 18 years!
Robyn Hitchcock is supported by Joel Alas.
Robyn Hitchcock & Joel Alas
Thursday, 27 April 2014 | 20:00 CET
Monarch | Skalitzer Str. 134 | 10999 Berlin/Kreuzberg
robynhitchcock.com | soundcloud.com/joelalas | kottimonarch.de
