Marci Cohen, Head, Music Library, Boston University Libraries (retired)

It’s hard to maintain a mid-level music career, yet eccentric English musician Robyn Hitchcock has just released his 25th studio album, The Confuser (Tiny Ghost). The album drop coincides with his second memoir, Stranded in the Future (Akashic Books). The timing facilitates cross-promotion – he performed songs from the album at a book store event in Boston – but the content is unrelated, unlike his 2024 memoir 1967: How I Got There and Why I Never Left and companion album of cover songs, 1967: Vacations in the Past (Tiny Ghost).

Hitchcock first gained notice if not outright fame fronting the Soft Boys, formed in 1976 and peaking with their 1980 song “I Wanna Destroy You” from their second album Underwater Moonlight (Armageddon). The band appreciated the spirit of punk rock but was never part of the scene, firmly middle class in a performatively working-class movement and more spiritually aligned with New York’s art rock punks like Television and the Patti Smith Group than the more “oafish” UK incarnation, as Hitchcock describes it. They cringed when the British press accused them of being “clever,” more focused on expressing themselves in three-part harmonies. The band split in 1981, with Kimberly Rew going on to form Katrina and Waves and writing their enduringly optimistic hit “Walking on Sunshine” (1985. Attic). Hitchcock embarked on a solo career but also worked with other Soft Boys members as his backing band, the Egyptians. With songs such as “Balloon Man” (Globe of Frogs. 1988. A&M), their videos were mainstays of MTV’s 120 Minutes during the show’s run well into the ‘90s, and he guest-hosted twice.  Reflecting the economics of his diminished album sales, he left the Egyptians behind after 1993’s Respect (A&M). He’s been primarily a solo act since, although he did release several albums with a band dubbed the Venus 3, which included R.E.M.’s Peter Buck, who was clearly doing it for fun, not the money or fame.

In the ensuing years, Hitchcock became quite the troubadour, for example, hitting Boston area clubs every year or two with just his guitars, a full band, or something in between. Drawing on his love of both Syd Barrett, early Pink Floyd’s psychedelic heart, and the Beatles, his skill in crafting catchy, jangling rock tunes only goes part of the way to explain his longstanding appeal, albeit to a limited audience. His lyrical perspective is unique, at times absurdist, with utterly unexpected turns of phrase. He acknowledges that he built songs around preposterous titles like “Give Me a Spanner, Ralph” (included on the 1986 compilation Invisible Hitchcock (Relativity)) because he wanted to write things that no one else would. His skewed sensibilities carry over to his stream-of-consciousness stage banter. Never one to rely on show biz cliches, one gig, for example, found him digressing on the marketing text on the bottle of cranberry juice perched on the stage.

He also remained connected with his fans during the COVID-19 lockdown. In March, 2020, he and his wife, Australian singer songwriter Emma Swift, produced a livestream performance from their Nashville home as a benefit for a recent tornado that damaged East Nashville. Rather than a one-off, they continued almost weekly. Other musicians tried to emulate the concert experience with their livestreams, which left audiences cold, aware that it wasn’t the real thing. But Hitchcock and Swift settled into the right formula, effectively treating it more like a cable access low-budget variety show. Hitchcock and Swift riff off each other with their repartee, like Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme if they were fans of Syd Barrett. They take requests from the lively audience chat, where regulars greet each other and have found a sense of community. They perform songs from throughout their extensive catalogues as well as doing covers, and they encourage or endure appearances from their cats, Tubby and Ringo. They’ve created a sense of intimacy with their audience with the peek into homes in Nashville (referred to as “Tubby’s House”) and London (“Tubby Towers”). They’ve continued the series across the rise and fall of several streaming platforms (currently on Bandcamp) most weeks when they aren’t touring and even occasionally from the road.

After wrapping up a U.S. tour with a full band, Hitchcock appeared at a handful of author events to promote Stranded in the Future. At the Boston date, he arrived resplendent in his trademark polka dots and toting an acoustic guitar. Differentiating the two memoirs, he explained that 1967 describes why he became a musician but Stranded describes how. 1967 is the foundation story, about the fortuitous confluence of a creative peak moment in pop music just as he reached an impressionable age. Away at boarding school at age 14, he found camaraderie among the “groovers,” the boys who were equally entranced by the latest albums from the Beatles, Bob Dylan, the Doors, and the other hits of the psychedelic movement. In homage, he addresses his audience as “groovers” in his missives and livestreams. The new book picks up where he left off and follows him through the launch of the Soft Boys, chronicling crucial relationships with an adolescent girlfriend who became a muse and with an inspirational musician neighbor, a thinly-veiled and perhaps slightly fictional version of Barrett.

Although he’s never been a mainstream hitmaker, he continues to earn regular airplay on college radio. The Confuser demonstrates 73-year-old Hitchcock’s enduring appeal with a niche audience, albeit one large enough to sustain a six-decade career. Hitchcock co-produced the album with Brad Jones and brought in session musicians Jeremy Fetzer (electric guitar), Todd Bolden (bass), and Eric Slick (drums) with contributions from his old Soft Boys bandmate Rew (electric guitar) and Gillian Welch for vocals to “Ghost in Sunlight.” A wah-wah guitar drives the opening track, “I Am This Thing” and includes the typically atypical line “I come at a price like egg fried rice.” “Yesterday’s Rain” bypasses typical “silver lining” cliches with unexpected lines like “Just a lonely crocodile on skis.” “Breathless” – not a Jerry Lee Lewis cover and at a more subdued pace – features his signature arpeggiated guitar lines and psychedelic flourishes recalling his ‘60s tastes. “Building from the Ruins” runs on loose funk while “How to Feel Alright” builds off a Bo Diddley beat and rhymes “jewelry” and “skewer me.” The chiming and lovely “Monday for Me” finds novel connections for a days-of-the-week song. Amid the music hall-style piano, the line “There’s a pigeon in my bed” confounds and surprises the listener in “Wasted,” the closing track about feeling spent. Hitchcock is a classicist, generating ever-new combinations with the basic building blocks of rock, and this album breaks no new musical ground. But the silver haired Hitchcock’s charmingly odd sense of wordplay and ability to craft a good tune consistently creates new delights.

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