The Counterforce No. 3
My Top 10 Robyn Hitchcock songs, The Siddeleys, Ari Surdoval's 'Double Nickels', Burt Bacharach
The night before I was leaving for this The Ballad Of Buttery Cake Ass: Behind The Music tour, I realized a playlist for the car would be in order. I started throwing on songs willy-nilly, which made for rather a strange flow, but it worked. However, one doesn’t like to have two songs by the same artist too close to one another. The only artist to repeat themselves on the playlist was Robyn Hitchcock, but once I thought of Mad Shelley’s Letterbox I immediately realized I’d want to hear Madonna Of The Wasps too.
Although I don’t recall the exact date or year, I got into Robyn Hitchcock’s work in the mid-90s, through one of those wonderful instances when you take a chance on an album you happen to see at a record store. I’d known So You Think You’re In Love for a while, and always thought it was a great pop song. So when I spied his The Kershaw Sessions on the counter display at Brass City Records in Waterbury, CT (a fantastic store paid homage to in The Ballad Of Buttery Cake Ass), I snatched it up right away. And fell in love with it. After all these years, to me it still contains the definitive recordings of 52 Stations, Madonna Of The Wasps, and Heaven. Three of my favourite Hitchcock tunes. And there’s so many of them. So as I drove, over the wild imposing mountains of Pennsylvania, I pondered what my Robyn Hitchcock Top 10 would be.
In no particular order:
Mad Shelley’s Letterbox – I remember Robyn playing this at The Iron Horse in Northampton, MA in March 2016 before it was released and being really impressed. It rocked. As always, that night Mr. Hitchcock’s between-song-banter was as entertaining as the songs themselves. I also did a very entertaining interview with Robyn for Brooklyn Vegan in the weeks leading up to that show. From the opening few seconds, you just know this is going to be a great pop song. There’s a real reaching for something when he goes to the upper register in the melody. ‘Now it’s only lips of loneliness that taste you’ – WOW. What a killer line. And the ‘oh god, you were beautiful’, full of incandescent, turbulent longing, like a good many of Hitchcock’s tunes. A longing for something that is both tangible and intangible. There’s a very real physical presence in his vocals/lyrics, and also an ethereal one. Which makes them a very human experience, though not in any way that typical, lesser pop songs touch upon. You’re not going to get this with anyone else. Hitchcock always claims to be indebted to Syd Barrett, John Lennon, and Bob Dylan, but he very much has his own thing going on.
Madonna Of The Wasps – Arguably, my favourite of my favourites. Something I love about his songs is that the meaning is conveyed by the words, but it’s not in the words. As if they’re painting a picture that can only be sensed, not spoken of. Nevertheless, the words are a vital part in evoking this. The imagery is vivid. Full of whimsy and wistfulness, always evoking something that you can’t get to any other way besides this specific amalgamation of melody and oblique lyrics. I don’t know what this song means, but it hits me the hardest of his songs.
52 Stations – Those ‘oo oo’s. Floating ahead of those chimey guitars. And the switch-up in the melody on ‘You remember how she was looking...’ just says so much. Again conjuring beyond the tangible. To me the definitive version is on The Kershaw Sessions, though the only version online seems to be taped from the radio.
Heaven – This and Madonna Of The Wasps would be my all-time faves. Similar chord progressions though the songs are wholly different. The lyrics here start out sounding like they could be about wars in the holy land. Then they map onto the body. ‘Use your legs, and use your heaven’, pretty obvious what that line means. Again, they’re not really ‘about’ things, they take in ephemera to create something uniquely new. And why pin down a meaning, especially when the feeling is so amazing.
N.Y. Doll – One of my favourite uses of the descending I V/iii iv chord progression. The whole thing is gorgeous. Hearing it at The Basement in Nashville in 2018 especially hit me hard, and check out the whole setlist. Killer show. One of his most poignant reflections on mortality. The line “in the library, of your memory”, especially the way it’s sung, as well as the ‘then they go again’
Oceanside – Great propulsion. I fondly remember him doing three songs at Eugene Mirman’s Comedy Festival one year in Brooklyn and getting excited that this was one of them. A feel I always associate with the better 70s rock, listened to on sunny days in seaside towns on summer vacations. A sense of freedom, when the horizon appears open and life seems alright.
If You Were A Priest – This song rocks. A descending line that doesn’t go exactly where you think it’s gonna go. Askew, and agitated & accentuated by the jagged guitar interjections of the later verses. Launching into that glorious pop chorus.
Adventure Rocket Ship – Another one that you just know from the first second is going to be a great, catchy rock song. “I wish I was the future, I’d kiss you in the past” gets me every time. I love that line.
So You Think You’re In Love – Just a fantastic pop song. One of the most straightforward of his songs, even reflected in the ‘but you wanna be straight about it’ lyric.
Queen Elvis – I never put this one on much but every time I hear it, I love it. It’s so breezy, and seems to come from some oft-unused corner of the mind.
While we’re at it, his whole The Man Upstairs album is excellent. Half cover songs, with The Ghost In You (The Psychedelic Furs), To Turn You On (Roxy Music) and Ferries (I Was A King) being fantastic. I reviewed it for The Quietus when it came out and I’m still a big fan.
The first night of the tour, at Visible Voice in Cleveland, journalist Jeff Niesel asked me if, like the guys in the book, there was ever an album I set out to find and never did. I had to think for a minute, and remembered when I first learned about ebay trying to get a couple of those Hit Parade records, especially The Sound Of The Hit Parade and More Pop Songs. I eventually found them in later years, but oh how agonizing it was after not being able to find them in shops for the longest time, them becoming available over this internet thing, but for exorbitant sums and shipped from Japan.
Then Andy behind the counter at Visible Voice piped up how The Siddeleys’ stuff is impossible to find. Now there is a band. If you don’t know them, get on that. Like a female-fronted Smiths. I remember Pete Hahndorf giving me a copy of Slum Clearance one of my first years in London and just loving it.
It was a pleasure to meet Ari Surdoval at my reading at Grimey’s. And he brought me a signed copy of Double Nickels. One of the best novels I’ve read in recent years. Highly recommended, especially if you grew up in suburban America in the mid-late 80s. The story comes from the same place as Paul Westerberg’s best songs. I love that book.
This entry has been written whenever I’ve had a chance on tour this past week. Please come to the remaining readings if you’re in Richmond, DC, or Philly this week.
And so as I was writing the majority of this, I got the sad news that Burt Bacharach died. A true genius. The Master of Sophisticated Pop. I remember buying that three cd boxset in 2003 and listening to it all the time. So this entry’s Seven Songs is for him.
Any Day Now
I think Elvis’ version is definitive. Oh man, that long intro melody line. Everything about this sums up everything the song is saying, and it’s flooring
I Say A Little Prayer
Again, Aretha’s version is definitive. I love how she doesn’t take the choruses herself and just adds in the ‘forever’s. Freaking awesome.
Baby, It’s You
The production on this is amazing too
Walk On By
So refined, mixing dignity and sorrow in every musical line.
Always Something There To Remind Me
My cousin once told me that this was playing on the radio the first time he ever made out with a girl. I love little details like that, the ones that make up a life
The Look Of Love
Sultry. Bacharch was a master of this type of feel. Strange to think this was featured in the James Bond parody, Casino Royale
This Guy’s In Love With You
These chords are so gorgeous