ROBYN HITCHCOCK
The Confuser (Tiny Ghost)
Aged 73 and after 25 albums, Robyn Hitchcock remains cheerfully baffled by existence, in a landscape of jangling guitars and bobbing basslines. I Am This Thing opens with a line unrepeatable in polite company, before making the shock of simply being alive sound celebratory. Breathless tells of an all-consuming lost love that leaves the former Soft Boy “guilty in the courtroom of my mind”.
Recorded in Nashville, The Confuser has a distinctly transatlantic sound, but Hitchcock’s clipped, eccentric vocals remain unmistakably English and frequently Lennonesque. My Dead Astronaut swings along, turning grief into cosmic black comedy, while Gillian Welch adds vocals to Ghost In Sunlight. With Chuck Prophet’s regular production collaborator Brad Jones behind the desk, Hitchcock adopts a distinctly Prophet-like delivery on the funky Building From The Ruins.
The wordplay may be too quirky for some, but warmth and humour abound. After six decades, Hitchcock remains strange, tuneful and very much alive.
words KARL ELLIS
