A space oddity's tuneful orbit..

[KiwiCoromandel]

A TALL Englishman with elegantly grey hair, a glint in his eye and a shirt of florid fabulousness, Robyn Hitchcock looks nothing less than a younger, healthier Peter Cook. You can imagine Hitchcock as the kind of charming but dotty gentleman squire ("the transparent earl", perhaps, of his opening song If You Were a Priest) who keeps his muddy wellies and his Turner originals in the same cupboard downstairs.

Droll of wit, a lover of the absurd and your ideal playmate for an evening in the sandpit of the English language, Hitchcock is what you imagine Cook would have been like if he had chosen rock'n'roll rather than comedy. The better to tell a rambling, increasingly obtuse and hilarious story involving space travel and exploding planets which ends suddenly with "and this song is less than three minutes".

While Hitchcock was less garrulous than on his last visit, when he played solo and, according to one fan, "was more like a stand-up comedian", there was still a strain of wry enjoyment through the nearly two-hour set - even when excoriating certain Texan presidents or playing songs where fatalism ruled. You get that when the material, the playing and the personalities are of this quality.

There are tunes galore here, given understated but firmly controlled flair by a trio of REM alumni: guitarist Peter Buck, drummer Bill Rieflin and bass player and vocalist Scott McCaughey. Hearing them dance through Hitchcock's Queen Of Eyes was like hearing avowed Hitchcock fans REM doing the Byrds doing Dylan. Buck's playing would have brought a tear to the eye of every guitar pop nerd who pines for the jangling prettiness of those early REM albums.

But the key to Hitchcock is not that his music is rooted in the mid-to-late '60s, infused with that period's melodic drive, but that he finds a way to twist those influences into odd shapes. So the harmonies are tweaked one step further than you might expect, the melodies are pretty but take a left when the natural order of things would be to take a right and, of course, the lyrics are always likely to offer moments such as "stop me baby, I'm a trolley bus".

Cook would have approved.

source:smh.com.au

image:www.american-buddha.com:ROBIN HITCHCOCK..."understated but firmly controlled flair"...