Robyn Hitchcock
The Golden Hinde, London
thirtieth June 2025
Nonetheless one in all England’s best-kept musical secrets and techniques after half a century on the highway, the singular Robyn Hitchcock docks across the clock, bringing his bucolic psychedelia for a mini-residency on The Golden Hinde. Steve Morgan clambers eagerly aboard
There are gigs, and there are Robyn Hitchcock gigs. At all times the identical, at all times utterly completely different. Tonight’s present, like the 2 subsequent nights on The Golden Hinde, bought out in seconds. Don’t let the tiny venue – the 70-strong throng poured into the stomach of Sir Francis Drake’s globe-traversing galleon – dampen that achievement. There would have been many extra takers for this distinctive voyage across the Hitchcock songbook: Robyn Hitchcock? On the reproduction of a 16th-century galleon? If anybody nonetheless asks: ‘What’s to not love?’ in 2025, then what’s to not love?
Throughout two units, armed with a solitary acoustic guitar, an exquisite bag of reverb tips and a very good, sympathetic combine, Hitchcock – sporting the primary of two trademark eye-catching shirts – is straight into his work. No introduction, off and working by way of beautiful opener September Cones, a poetic musing on love, loss of life and the passing of time. “The glider crashed into the hill, when your time stopped, my time stood nonetheless.”
It’s a lesser-known quantity, however an amazing disarmer earlier than the jauntily upbeat, bleakly comedian Saturday Groovers, a gallows-humour dissection of Sixties heads and the ageing course of – ‘emphysema, coronary heart illness and gout, nothing can transfer us, Saturday groovers’. Hardly ever has loss of life sounded this a lot enjoyable. “At the very least a number of us lived lengthy sufficient to see that it didn’t work and that what changed it was far worse than what we’d initially meant, so energy to us senior groovers,” he sighs. Over the following two hours Hitchcock riffs and rifles by way of his – and others’ – again catalogues: 21 selection and lesser-known cuts from numerous profession guises spanning six many years.
From the Captain Beefheart, Kevin Coyne-tinged, fidgety late ’70s/early ’80s pop of The Smooth Boys – alumnus Kimberley Rew is within the entrance row tonight – by way of the softer, psych-tinged melodies of the Egyptians after which, extra lately in solo guise, the place he fortunately mixes each types, there are palette pleasers for all. One man and a guitar may be the oldest trick within the ebook – however in Hitchcock’s tender fingers, it’s alchemy. As is his wont, the comedian asides, usually totally surreal but at all times embroidered with fact, precede or observe songs so usually of, or about, love, unrequited or in full bloom.
There are musings on all-pervasive trendy know-how: “we’re changing ourselves with the iPhone 17: once I wrote that, we have been all utilizing iPhone 8”; Donald Trump, involuntary expectorations. All a part of the Hitchcock attraction, an armour that makes him distinctive. At 72, actual fame, usually tantalisingly shut – not least within the mid-’80s, the place his cult US school radio standing nonetheless bites onerous – has remained simply out of attain. However simply because it ain’t the place you’re from, it’s the place you’re at, in Hitchcock’s case it’s ain’t the place you ended up, however the way you travelled. The intimate environment of the Golden Hinde make for the proper car. Just like the cat that may get near you, there’s affection, however at a take away. He doesn’t actually need to sit in your lap, although within the tight confines of a remarkably well-aired venue, he’s so shut he’s not far off.
It’s powerful to select standouts when the standard bar is so excessive. Autumn Sun shades, a superbly structured, Lennon-esque train in gentle and shade, is fantastically melodious; the road “and also you by no means know your destiny, ‘til she’s sitting in your automobile” is without delay chilling and romantic.
Equally good is The Lizard, from 1981’s solo debut, Black Snake Diamond Function, which closes the opening set. It’s a cautionary nod to the grim – or Jim – demise of Doorways frontman Mr Morrison, self-styled ‘Lizard King’. “You put on the lizard’s pores and skin, no man could be a god and win in any respect” … “And when the clocks have stopped, you’ll discover out what the lizard dropped”. Stripped again, these darkish lyrics get an additional, unsettling sheen. Much less bizarre scenes contained in the gold mine, extra bizarre scenes contained in the Gold(en) Hinde. It’s additionally a near-perfect marriage of his vocal and guitar-playing expertise, qualities that the arresting lyrics or cartoonishly surrealist touches can often overshadow.
Switching between gentle and closely picked nimble folk-blues guitar figures, it brings Richard Thompson to thoughts, whereas Hitchcock’s change to a fading falsetto isn’t any much less acrobatic than his fretboard fingers. There are terrific variations of ’80s faves Chinese language Bones, I Typically Dream Of Trains and Queen Elvis, and time – naturally – for a conventional sea shanty in Polly On The Shore, and cracking covers of Dominoes, initially by Hitchcock’s spirit musician Syd Barrett. “With out him there could be no Robyn Hitchcock, not within the type I took, anyway,” he says. A superb rendition of The Beatles’ Day In The Life, a track repeatedly carried out down the many years, stays a factor of magnificence. The night ends with a triumphant model of David Bowie’s Soul Love, the place these agelessly golden tonsils are evident as soon as extra.
We bend our backs and creak up the slender, vertiginous stairs. Thameside is now in twilight. Most of us right here have just a few rings round our waists, however there are at all times new converts. The elders keenly quiz the dazzled first timers. They, too, now know the magic Hitchcock portal, a gateway to a world recognisable as ‘pop’, however at all times skewed, as if skilled whereas waking from a dream. Bizarre, fantastic, woozy, wistful. It’s solely Monday, however our hearts really feel like Friday night time.
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You will discover Robyn Hitchcock on-line right here: Robyn Hitchcock official web site
He’s additionally on Instagram and Bandcamp
All phrases by Steve Morgan. Steve can be at @stevemorgan68.bsky.social
All images by Leo Cicero
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