Robyn Hitchcock: Confusion Says

Born in London and a longtime resident of Nashville, singer-songwriter Robyn Hitchcock enjoys an influential and critically-acclaimed career. With his late ‘70s band the Soft Boys, Hitchcock channeled ‘60s psychedelia and a beat poetry aesthetic into a punk and post-punk framework. As a solo artist and with backing bands the Egyptians and the Venus 3, Hitchcock has continued his musical odyssey through a world filled with wonder and wordplay.

Hitchcock’s surrealistic bent ensures that even when he’s writing what would otherwise be a straightforward love song, his inspired, left-field turns of phrase give the songs an indelible stamp that marks them as Hitchcock originals. “The words present themselves to me,” he explains, “but I’m obviously going to favor words that I think are interesting rather than generic words that could have been said by anybody, anytime.” He admits that when it comes to words, he’s “a bit of a snob.”

Hitchcock makes the point that words are a songwriter’s sharpest and most effective tool in the creation of original songs. “All the chord sequences have been used dozens of times,” he emphasizes. “I’m not going to invent new chords, and I’m not really going to invent new ways of making melodies flow.” Instead, he says that he’s merely “using the old pathways, just rearranging them. Really, the only thing that hasn’t been done before is the words.”

A number of celebrated artists have taken notice of Hitchcock’s gifts, covering select songs from his vast body of work. The Decemberists, the Replacements and Gillian Welch & David Rawlings have covered his songs live onstage. Sparklehorse and Vic Chesnutt both recorded Hitchcock songs. “R.E.M. did one of my songs [“Arms of Love”] as a B-side,” he says with a chuckle. “But they got the chords wrong.”

Hitchcock says he’s “always surprised” when an artists covers his material. “Because,” he explains, “I think of my songs as very personal to me.” He likens a cover performance of one of his songs to “almost as if somebody else is reading out from my journal.” At the same time, Hitchcock readily concedes that he’s generally pleased when someone covers his music. “It’s flattering to think that other people can relate to my songs at all, because I know my songs are very subjective,” he says. “I am a solipsistic person.”

Hitchcock admires songwriters who write about widely-relatable themes. But he doesn’t view himself in that category. “I don’t feel my songs are universal in the way that, say, Beatles songs are universal,” he says. He does note that at least one songwriter has managed to have it both ways. “I suppose what’s intriguing about Bob Dylan is that so many people feel they can relate to him, and yet his lyrics are so peculiar to him.”

When Robyn Hitchcock goes about the business of making a new album – like The Confuser, his 25^th and latest set for release July 24 – he’s selecting the best among his most recent compositions and crafting the record around a theme. “If I’ve been living through some particular crisis – generally of my own making – then that is liable to result in an album that’s more intense,” he says. Describing 1989’s Queen Elvis and Eye from 1990 as his “breakup records,” he says that at the time he was “particularly battle-scarred, because I was breaking up with pretty much two people at the same time.” And he says that both his 2014 album The Man Upstairs and its self-titled followup – both crafted during a time of personal turmoil – display a “shocked into wisdom” feel.

The Confuser has a thematic unity as well. “It is very much to do with disintegration,” Hitchcock says. “I’m disintegrating. The environment is disintegrating. America is disintegrating,” he says. “It’s not possible for me to shut all that off, so I’m trying to respond to it in an upbeat, positive way rather than wringing my hands and going, ‘Oh, God, this is so dreadful.’”

Yet even when facing the darkness, a Robyn Hitchcock record is always fun. Backed by a spare, tight ensemble featuring Dr. Dog drummer Eric Slick, bassist Todd Bolden, guitarist Jeremy Fetzer and producer Brad Jones on keys, Hitchcock serves up a message of existential hope, leaved with the songwriter’s trademark weirdness. (Sample couplet: “I grew out of somebody else; she wore a wedding ring / And when I decompose I will be part of everything.”)

“Deterioration is a law of life,” Hitchcock says. “In one way, I feel almost blasé about it.” He contemplates upon the unrelenting bad news in print and on screen every day. “You can’t live your life in a permanent state of red alert; the negative adrenaline that comes by being overstimulated by the news isn’t necessarily helpful.”

Even in the face of that not-so-groovy decay, Hitchcock has much to be happy about. He and fellow singer-songwriter Emma Swift celebrated 10 years of marriage last September. While they rarely collaborate, Swift nonetheless influenced her husband’s work on The Confuser. A trained vocalist, Swift “really put me through the wringer when it came to vocals,” Hitchcock says, and the results sing for themselves. A highly regarded artist herself with a pair of albums to her credit, Sydney-born Swift is also the head of Tiny Ghost Records, the label releasing Hitchcock’s albums since 2011.

Swift will open for Hitchcock on select dates of the current tour, including the Grey Eagle performance. And she sometimes joins her partner’s band onstage to provide harmony vocals on some songs. Hitchcock describes his wife’s original music as “a sort of ‘60s dream music; it’s very much not part of its time.” Pausing in reflection, he adds, “I think Em and I have that in common; we’re both not part of our times.”