Wey Wey Hep a Hole Ding Dong: Robyn Hitchcock the song by song, album by album thread

Yeah, Eye does generally have a very cold, stark ambience to it (where IODOT was weird but still warm). I don't find the album an unpleasant experience because of that, though (I find it an unpleasant experience because of 'Clean Steve' etc etc).

It's not the best track on (or rather alongside) the album by any means but I'm still quite fond of Transparent Lover, especially the 'Gone, boy, gone, gone' 'chorus' and the rhyming of 'gulls and plovers' with 'lover'. Sometimes I'm just easily pleased. 3.2/5

Beautiful Girl : A nice, if hesitantly happy tune. It doesn't bear that much analysis really, but it's still one of the four or five songs I like most on the album.
3.8/5

 

Beautiful Girl -- what seems like an effortless throwaway -- it clicks for me. 4/5

 

Beautiful Girl - 4/5 - I like it, but it sure does repeat that chorus a lot.

 

“Beautiful Girl”—2.75/5

A bit too on the nose, even with the awkward hesitancy in the lyrics. The repetition of the title in the chorus, again, can get grating.

I like my RH songs with a little more meat, so right after this I randomly listened to—no, not “Meat”—but “The Lizard” from Black Snake Diamond Role and that set everything aright.

 

Since I've always considered this an "in-between" album, I listen to it front to back on rare occasions. So this middle section of songs goes by pleasantly enough. Listening to them individually is a bit more underwhelming than the whole thing. I think this one suffers a bit due to that. 3/5

 

I'm now going to call that entire genre of stark, confessional music "underpants rock."

 

Didn't somebody post a picture of Hitchcock and Jerry Garcia when we discussed Chinese Bones? I went back to the pages where we discussed it, and it's not there...

 

Well, it seems like the trip with Eye on this thread is discordant with the larger Hitchcock-world trip. Eye is usually revered. I admit though, I am more or less in line with you good people, it's not one of my favorite RH albums. However, I feel defensive for it in this context and want everyone to worship it here like they do elsewhere, so I can tell myself that the fault is with me rather than the album and feel like I have a masterpiece waiting for me to catch up with it. It took me a good long time to warm up to Forever Changes, but when it clicked it was a great experience. Who knows whether Eye will make it, now I am not totally sanguine on that score.

Still, I am a RH fan, which means I don't un-dig that which I have dug, and Eye I have dug...I don't revile Eye, I wouldn't burn it in front of the courthouse, it is not unpleasant or beat.

"Beautiful Girl" is a tough one to rate. It perks the album back up after the bonus tracks drag it down, but it's not that great. Lance expressed it perfectly: "Slight, but it's not trying that hard." That's exactly it, so what do I rate it? I guess 3.2/5.

 

I know exactly what you mean. I'm feeling a bit guilty for slating so many of the songs thus far. I guess that I hold Robyn's best stuff in such high esteem that it's easy to forget that what may be more average for him isn't average for most songwriters. Eye is certainly a more interesting album than many artists have turned out, it just doesn't resonate with me as much as some of his other ones.

Having said that, I just picked up the LP sleeve and looking over it, I realise there are a lot of songs I like very much , but they're diluted by the weaker ones. So the song-by-song approach is maybe making it seem weaker than it actually is. My favourites are mainly on side 2 in any case, and things are about to take an upswing with the next song.

 

They sure are!

 

That was my impression, and I’m more in agreement with this thread as well. I know it’s not the be-all and end-all, but on rateyourmusic, Eye just barely beats out I Often Dream of Trains in ratings and ties with Fegmania. I am less familiar with Eye—and maybe it’s because I came to it knowing it’s so beloved by some, but I rank it far lower in RH’s discography.

 

I think Eye is more than the sum of it's parts.

 

I know this is nitpicky, but I'd interpret that as Trains beating Eye, because it sustains a 3.64 over 1704 ratings, and Eye's 3.69 only has 591 ratings...it took me years to figure this out, but you have to factor in number of ratings and adjust..

 

Yes, really good point - and interesting that so many more gave a rating to Trains. It does seem like Eye is a favorite with many fans, maybe especially for those who see the A&M Egyptians albums as too slickly produced.

 

Yes, and I mean 3.64 over 591 ratings is a really good rating, in any case...

 

It's very good for rateyourmusic, few albums with several hundred votes are rated that high.

I think Eye is good, but I think that the late eighties/early nineties are not his best period, and that seems clear.

Our votes for "Beautiful Girl"
1-0
2-0
3-7
4-3
5-0
Average: 3.345

 

Today's song is "Raining Twilight Coast", written by Robyn Hitchcock and engineered by Wendy Bardsley.

Lyric.

A demo of the song was also released on the 1995 CD version of the album as a bonus track; later it was moved to the While Thatcher Mauled Britain compilation.

Robyn later re-recorded the song for the 2011 album Tromso Kaptein; I will hold that version up separately when the time comes

 

OK, "Raining Twilight Coast" is, after "Queen Elvis," the second song on here that I think is a classic.

I think he says "I'm on the raining twilight coast," which is a tiny difference from the lyrics given on Genius, but seems important to me nonetheless. But I hesitate to edit the Genius page, as he kind of swallows it and it sounds like it could as easily be "a." So I'm not confident about this.

Anyway, "One thing baby, you forgot my heart"...this seems like he's riffing on a kind of pop trope; although I don't know if it's a quote, if it is I don't know from where. And if it's not a quote, it's hard to justify my claim that it's riffing on a pop trope...maybe it's the kind of thing that sounds like it would be in a pop song? In any case, I think the pop love song almost-trope refrain is set to clash against the odder verses? I believe something like that is happening, so there's something kind of droll or ironic that I hear in the refrain.

He can take this kind of thing too far and in fact often does, beginning at least with the Portland Arms. And indeed on this very song, the backing vocalists singing "one thing! gimme gimme one thing!" on Tromso Kaptein is a bit much...however, they sound really pretty nonetheless, so I'm going to allow it anyway. I'd say this is the canonical version, and Tromso is a nice addition to have if you already know it. But it's always welcome at that point of that (really good) album.

Ultimately the song has a nice, intimate feel--the mention of rain seems to aid in this, as it seems to put you in a coastal inn looking out the window, although admittedly the narrator may be out in the elements, it just doesn't feel that way to me.

The lyrics are better sung than they read, as they're perfect for the song. He may be a little too pleased with "There's so many ways you can screw up a child" and the shift from the metaphor of a sacred, monstrous bond with the sea to a mundane remark about parenting, but I'll allow it once again.

Anyway, I love love love this song, 5/5

 

Not sure whether you mean clear to you, or clear to "us"...anyway, I'm not sure about that. I think I like Queen Elvis and Perspex Island roughly as much as Fegmania! and Element of Light (which everyone in the world seems to like better than I), but I'm not completely sure of that; we'll see when we consider Perspex Island and I can think about that more. And I was going to say that I really love Moss Elixir, but I just checked the date and that's 1996...for some reason I thought it was closer to 1991. Anyway I really like Respect, although I don't like it as much as the other two mentioned, I still think it adds and doesn't detract from the score if we're pitting those against the first two and IODOT....even IODOT, which ultimately I think gives the early-mid 80s a victory by besting Eye, has some things I don't like that much. I don't think he has a perfect album, probably the s/t album from 2017 comes closest...

 

OK, I meant "me!" I mean, you're right.

For me the run of albums from Globe of Frogs to EYE -- and in general what we could call "The A&M Years" (even though EYE was not released on A&M) are somehow a step down from most of the eighties, (notwithstanding Groovy Decay/Decoy) although it bears mentioning that their are outtakes from these years that are definitely great and no real bad albums.
And in some cases there are some incredible gems strewn about this period, for sure.

 

Did someone say "incredible gem?" Because that's what this song is, if you ask me. The exquisite guitar opening creates a rather sombre mood that's almost undone by the blues in the first line. As the song goes on the meandering melody, pinned down by the amazing hook two-line chorus (Just one thing, baby, you forgot my heart). There's somethting incredibly raw about this, almost as if Robyn is making up the melody as he goes along: sometimes that works, and sometimes it doesn't: here it actually enhances the song, with the half-spoken words gaining clarity and power for it while the chorus melody and guitar work are allowed to fill in the melodic hole in the song.

This feels personal and raw, like so many songs on this album: uncharacteristic of Robyn, who generally is more comfortable sneering or putting down than exposing his aching emotional wounds....I don't know if I've said it before on this thread (something tells me I have) but I think this is very much Robyn's Blood on the Tracks, even more so than his Plastic Ono Band. Here the Dylan influence seems overt yet not pastiche-y: this is all Robyn and one of my favorite songs by him.

Oh, and what a title!

5/5

 

Oh yeah, I forgot about Globe of Frogs somehow...I'm not sure if I agree or not, maybe I actually do...

 

Yeah...you read "You forgot my heart" straight, and I read it as kind of ironic/once removed....but I'm not sure I always hear it that way, I can probably go your way on it too.

 

Raining Twilight Coast - This one is not a favorite. The guitar playing is fantastic and is my favorite thing about it, but overall it does not truly reel me in. I hear the Dylan influence in the way he sings the verses, and I like that too. This song has a sort of slow blues feel to it, which is not a favorite style of mine, so perhaps that’s why this song doesn’t rise above “good” for me.

3/5

 

One of the better tracks on the album. It strikes me as weird hybrid of all sorts of things; it has a touch of Nick Drake about it as well as the obvious Bob Dylan influence. I can imagine Roger Waters singing it and some of the guitar playing has Floydian flourishes too while there are also elements of the Stones version of Love In Vain.

Lyrically it's very good apart from "I'm a fish baby" which is a bit Hitchcock-by-numbers and jars against the narrative. I also like the more fully realised Tromso Kaptein version which benefits from Jenny Adejayan's brooding cello, although I'm less rather less keen on the backing vocals.

Raining Twilight Coast 3.8/5.