Contributed By: Lion on The Table
Created On: Friday, 01 February 2008
Hits: 100
 Robyn Hitchcock Mostly acoustic, largely a solo effort and full of whimsical, clever, gently dark songs about typically English preoccupations from disused tram lines, dead wives, psychosis and religion, tonight's gig is a live reinterpretation of that entire album. The 'Director's Cut', he calls it, and don't bother - he got to the obvious joke before you.
To put the evening into context, and perhaps to save himself from accusations of self-absorption, Hitchcock starts with a cover of More Than This, a Roxy Music song contemporary to those he will play tonight, and avoids the Don't Look Back formula of simply recreating the album in order by ignoring some tracks (I Wish I Was A Pretty Girl) and substituting others (My Wife And My Dead Wife) in their place. The effect is close to perfection. Dressed in faded jeans and a hippie shirt, floppy-fringed with an acoustic guitar, Hitchcock is the original twisted folk troubadour made good, surviving where John Lennon and Syd Barrett didn't, staying true to his roots where Dylan plugged in.
The beautiful moments are plentiful, but those deserving a special mention are the three-part vocal harmony of Uncorrected Personality Traits, with Terry Edwards and Tim Keegan; the deliciously dark faux-Americana country gospel of Ye Sleeping Knights of Jesus, and the glorious decision to close the night on Goodnight I Say, from 1985's Fegmania.
In between, he treats us to his own songs and those of others - The Incredible String Band's The Yellow Snake, for one - snippets of poetry and spoken word, inter-song banter and words of wisdom: 'that voice inside your head that says he's your mate? Don't give him your pin number'. It's spaceman music, but spaceman music well-grounded, matured and grown up and worthy of taking its place in a room next door to Beethoven. Perhaps the South Bank is the perfect venue for him after all.
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