from Pitchfork
Robyn Hitchcock
I Wanna Go Backwards
[Yep Roc; 2007]Robyn Hitchcock’s catalog has been sprawling and self-referential from the get-go. The title of his solo debut, Black Snake Diamond Role, was a play on "Black Snake Diamond Rock", a song by the Hitchcock-fronted and then-recently disbanded Soft Boys. In the 26 years since Black Snake’s release, Hitchcock’s songs have remained riddled with recurring characters and self-aware puns. That Hitchcock is not often cited as an influential figure outside of his work with the Soft Boys speaks to the weirdly self-contained nature of his musical world. While he’s covered a great deal of stylistic ground over a dizzying number of albums, each one is an iteration of a musical persona so unique and fully realized that it seems almost impossible to emulate.
I Wanna Go Backwards compiles three of Hitchcock’s early solo albums and two discs of demos and outtakes, all of which are populated by historical mirages, impossible characters, and slap-yourself-on-the-forehead wordplay. It’s fantastical, but it fails miserably as escapism. For all of the whimsy and oddball imagery, the mundane and/or the horrific always seem to be lurking just around the corner. In a sense, Hitchcock’s best work is defined by this current of self-sabotage, by the continuous appearance of the plain and the nightmarish in a world of child-like fantasy and humor.
The liner notes for I Wanna Go Backwards’ 2xCD outtakes and demos set While Thatcher Mauled Britain serve as something of Rosetta Stone for the recurring imagery on these releases. In the only text accompanying the box set that is not unerringly cryptic, Hitchcock explains that these records were inspired by the despairing state of Britain at the time they were written and recorded. Aside from elucidating the frequent appearance of colonial themes (see Eye opener "Cynthia Mask" and I Often Dream of Trains’ "This Could Be the Day"), this also speaks to the oddly intrusive quality of the darker elements in Hitchcock’s work. While these albums take place largely in the plane of the imagination, the integrity of this world is always being undermined by an invisible dialogue with an increasingly sad and decrepit reality.
Released just a year after the Soft Boys’ demise, 1981’s Black Snake Diamond Role is the most immediately accessible of these three records, and in many ways the silliest. Opener "The Man Who Invented Himself" sands down the new wave edges of the Soft Boys into bouncy piano flourishes and an unflinching pop sensibility. Still, the weirdness of this record is palpable and often quite menacing, even when Hitchcock is being witty or flip. In "Do Policemen Sing", which recalls the fragmented sleaze of the Soft Boys’ "Old Pervert", Hitchcock engages in a call and response verse with himself, asking and answering: "Do policemen dream?/ Yes, when they’re fast asleep/ And when policemen dream/ It proves they’re fast asleep." This kind of weird circular aside shows Hitchcock at his most charming and his most baffling.
Though Black Snake Diamond Role is in many ways the most accessible of these three releases, I Often Dream of Trains is the unqualified masterpiece, a beautiful and haunting record that recalls in equal parts Syd Barrett and Monty Python. While Black Snake does its fair share of genre-hopping, I Often Dream is deeply and profoundly schizophrenic, running off in several directions at once with unblinking conviction. The understated, haunting beauty of "Nocturne (Prelude)" is followed by "Sometimes I Wish I Was a Pretty Girl", which is frenzied and off-key enough to lend some unsettling menace to its obvious humor. Even the most seemingly tossed-off or silly moments of I Often Dream of Trains contribute towards the album’s overall thematic pull. The goofy acapella "Uncorrected Personality Traits" points to the album’s odd emphasis on psychoanalytic themes, at once adding a humorous light spot to the record and lending new weight to its obtuse imagery.
Eye nicely splits the difference between the jauntier Black Snake and the more vivid and surrealistic Trains. The grating jingle-meets-stream-of-consciousness "Certainly Cliquot" is the only track on these three records that actually annoys me ("Let’s Get Really Mellow Together" from Trains has thankfully been cut from this iteration of the record). And while Eye doesn’t hold together with the same potency as Trains, it is host to some of the most fully realized songs in this set. "Queen Elvis," possibly the album’s standout, is lovelier than any song with lyrics like "getting’ blowjobs from the press" has the right to be.
These reissues (each album is available separately as well) improve upon Rhino’s earlier batch of re-releases, adding, removing, and resequencing some tracks to good effect. The demos compiled as While Thatcher Mauled Britain are, unfortunately, nowhere near as enlightening as Hitchcock’s liner notes. Most were already released as You & Oblivion, and while some of the songs are quite good (see "Fiend Before the Shrine" and a sturdy demo version of "Queen Elvis") the compilation primarily serves to reinforce the musical and thematic concerns of the three proper albums, rather than offering many delights of its own.
Still, even the most substandard material has its place here. Given the thoroughly far-flung nature of Hitchcock’s solo catalog, it was a wise move to compile this set according to aesthetic continuity rather than strict chronology. Though he may not be included in the current canon of indie music’s influential forebears, the material on I Wanna Go Backwards has aged remarkably well. Twenty-five years and countless albums later, these albums still offer an abundance of charm and mystery.
-Matt LeMay, November 30, 2007