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

This is the good stuff. It's one of the first times he lets the mask down a bit to show the very serious artist underneath. 4.5/5

 

On a road trip today. Wife asked what I wanted to hear and I replied "I Often Dream of Trains". There was a lot of singing from me during the drive.

I'm so happy to finally have reached this part of his solo output. It's creative, unique/singular and passionate in the way all the great rock albums are.

 

'Cathedral' is just beautiful. The guitar and piano have a sound as cold and sharp as ice crystals, and those harmonies are wonderful. (I think the monastic drone effect they create is what he might have been chasing with those accordion songs like 'Opiatrescence')

I'm not sure I know exactly what this is about, but I find the feeling and atmosphere it creates very affecting.

5/5

 

“Cathedral” — 5/5

This is one of the songs I think about when I think about I Often Dream of Trains. A beautiful, hypnotic piece. And its concern with a “cathedral of the mind” is so resonant with this brilliantly insular album. Robyn has spoken of albums that are worlds unto themselves; “Cathedral” reflects this tendency, and IODT is the great example in his catalogue. So yeah, full points for this one.

 

The demo of the song makes it clearer that it's not a word so much as a sound effect.

I love this song. It's utterly deranged, and the arrangement is kind of like garden shed Phil Spector. 5/5

 

Cathedral - 5/5

 

Our votes for "Cathedral"

1-0
2-0
3-0
4-1
5-9
Average: 4.81

 

Today's song is "Uncorrected Personality Traits"by Robyn Hitchcock.


Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/track/6WuA630yWt82xRSUaGzZ8u?si=k8J6yCfBTViLhtT3NMKnvQ
Lyric.

Live versions of this song have been released on:

• Live at the Cambridge Folk Festival (recorded July 31, 1992 by the Egyptians)
• Elixirs and Remedies (video and DVD, recorded 2002 with Grant Lee Phillips
• Sex, Food, Death...and Insects video documentary
• I Often Dream of Trains in New York, recorded in November 2008

 

Uncorrected- 5/5 - I mean, COME ON.

 

When you come across an artist that writes comedy songs that are actually funny, you have to cherish them. 5/5.

 

Coming after the serious and deeply melancholy "Cathedral", this song is pretty perfectly sequenced; and it's brilliantly done with Robyn returning to the a capella jazz-pop harmonies that featured so heavily on Live at the Portland Arms. The lyric is goofy (though in this day and age with its celebration of transexuality and so on, seems a just a little dated) and there are actually a few hints of darkness and what I find interesting is that thei song displays a certain inability to take the subject matter seriously. And the subject actually is serious, when you think about it.

4.5/5

 

Not totally serious, but I think that was Robyn's way of confronting the whole issue he obviously feels (from numerous heart-on-sleeve interviews) he needs to deal with, though he seems to have had a reasonable relationship with his own father... the dated refs to trans and hom. don't ring with his own views, maybe they're a sop to the traditional British stiff-upper-lip background. I'm (again) going to break with the general consensus here - it works as part of the weird atmosphere of the album, and later as a comedy turn by the Egyptians, but I always found this song a bit of a cringe, personally. 4/5 for originality.

 

Uncorrected Personality Traits - Absolute genius. There is so much going on in this song that I wouldn’t even know how to begin talking about it. To this day, my mouth drops open in amazement and delight when I hear it.

5/5

 

Uncorrected Personality Traits

I'm with the crowd on this one. Fabulous. Genuinely funny, dark lyrics, and very accomplished musically. I think the darkness is what makes it work so well - the juxtaposition with the jaunty presentation is the best part of the joke. Kind of a reflection of the British sense of keeping calm and obliviously pretending everything is smiles when it's actually pretty dismal. The "OI!" after the line about adult alcoholics and middle-aged suicide is so inappropriate it's hilarious.

I love the live versions too.

One measure of a classic song is something that couldn't have come from any other artist. Who else would have come up with this?

5/5

 

On a side note, I have a fond memory of going to a party at some acquaintances' house, spotting IODOT on their record rack and saying how much I loved it. They responded by bursting into a drunken but near perfect rendition of 'Uncorrrected Personality Traits'. Obviously, a close friendship was guaranteed after that...

 

I loved this from the word go and had memorised the lyrics within a few days of buying the album. I'm not usually a great one for acapella songs but this is just irresistible. It's almost more music-hall than folk and you can imagine one of those 1970s TV performers belting it out on The Good Old Days, had they existed in a more enlightened age.

Lyrically it's familiar RH territory but with a hugely humorous twist and about as quintessentially English as they come. I believe Robyn was a product of the 1960s boarding school system which may explain a lot about the darkly amusing reflections on parenting and repressed sexuality.

A few months ago a poster on the RH Facebook page suggested he was ashamed of liking this song and that we should all boycott it because of its supposed transphobia. As far as I know it was his only post so it may have been a case of niche trolling. As @chrism1971 says, I don't for a minute see RH as being anti gay/trans then or now and I can't believe the song would cause offence to anyone other than those actively seeking it.

Always an absolute joy when performed live.

 

I agree but there are people like that!

 

Sorry I'm late Sir, the dog ate my keyboard.

Uncorrected Personality Traits : I think Robyn knew exactly what he was trying to achieve here. I don't think it's a window onto his genuine view of psychosexual traits at all - it's a parody of over-earnest textual analysis of sexual development, set to a jolly traditional(ish) English folk tune to further highlight the pretentious faddishness of much of this kind of thinking that somehow becomes orthodoxy.

And it's so short and catchy that we can all join in!

I think I may have mentioned earlier that even my folk-purist first wife loved this song.

5/5.


Nocturne(s): Beautiful, elegaic. 4.5/5.

Sometimes I Wish I Was A Pretty Girl: A breezy opener. I have heard early live versions where The Word is clearly 'rape', which is certainly a loaded term, but I think there it refers to him emotionally raping himself rather than the more obvious physical power play on another person, which is certainly a complex concept to wrestle with. Even so, Robyn seems to have since distanced himself from this contentious aspect of the song (even though it clearly represents a character rather than RH himself ) using various methods like changing the gender from 'girl' to 'boy', and he now apparently seems unwilling to play it all (on the IODOT anniversary shows, the album cut was played as an edited tape intro rather than RH playing it himself). Love it musically (especially the manic off-key piano) but less fond of it lyrically. 3.6/5

Cathedral: Beautiful, delicate, everything that Pretty Girl isn't. 4.9/5


Most of the songs on 'Trains' are heavily piano-infused, and I don't think it's a coincidence that this abum is probably Robyn's best.

 

Winchester College - Wikipedia

 

RH onstage somewhere: "I'm not gay. But I did go to A Good School."



(an English joke for English folk)

 

I just never got into this one, I think I get the humor but it's kind of grating, and the harmonies are also a little grating...but it is clever guess, 1.8/5

 

Also the alma mater of Rishi Sunak. Ha ha.

 

He's got a lot on his plate.

 

Last week it was "eat out and help out" now it's "drink up and f*** off."