Robyn Hitchcock (Sunbear)
The Drake Underground. Friday, June 11, 2010.
I probably go to enough shows not to get too worked up about any particular one of them; or, put another way, I go to too many shows to get too excited that often. This was one that I was excited for.
Like the way I'm sure a lot of people feel about their own favoured "cult artists", I've long felt a bit of tension about Robyn Hitchcock — utter confusion that, based on his talents, he's not far more well-known than he is, tempered by a sort of possessive happiness that the result of that is that I get to see him close up and unspoilt by a mass audience.
With something like seventeen albums to his name1 — a few classics included — Hitchcock has a body of work that might appear daunting to the uninitiated. And yet, he is something close to brilliant — his mix of classic songwriting and beautiful melodies with suggestive lyrics that carry the songs' emotional depth despite (or more likely because of) their surrealist wanderings, as if capturing life in all its squishy, confusing glory. That penchant for abstract whimsy has long blinded some people to his merits, but for my money he's one of the best, and well-worth heading out for.
Though I knew this to be an early show, on what turned out to be a rather lovely evening out, I couldn't be in a rush to get down to Queen Street, and ended walking down on a rambling, indirect route. Climbed down to the Drake's basement at about 8:45 to find the opener already on stage. This was, quite sensibly, set up as a seated show, and as I got there, the place was less than half-filled. Managed to snag a fine seat, second row centre.
That opener was Sunbear, the project of local folksinger Kate Boothman, who was playing solo on this night, though a traipse through her myspace2 shows that she often is backed by some choice local musicians — her new one Moonbath3 gets by with a little help from Ian Russell ($100), Nick Taylor (Steamboat) and Melissa Boraski (Eiyn Sof).
On her own, Boothman featured mostly fingerpicked guitar, and her music was "proper folk", in that slightly stiff, vaguely formalistic way. A little austere, like a cold wind, but also with a welcoming purity to it. Between songs, mind you, Boothman was genial in chatting from the stage. Looking around as the place filled in, there was an amiable, out-with-friends kind of crowd, who listened attentively, laughing along.
Listen to a song from this set here.
It felt weird to behold such an utterly bare stage — not even an amp to be seen. And no merch to speak of, either.4 One imagines Robyn Hitchcock to be a streamlined touring operation — one man, arriving by streetcar, guitar in hand is my mental image. That kind of minimal set-up meant for a quick turnaround and when the soundman brought a cup of tea up to the table on the stage, one could figure that the time was near.
Taking the stage in a jaunty shirt5, he opened with "The Ghost Ship" (the 1988 b-side to "Balloon Man"), an unexpected choice and rather something of an obscurity, showing the depth of the catalogue that he has to draw from. Even for things that aren't obscurities, the well's so deep that songs like "Mexican God" (from '99's Jewels for Sophia) are unexpected — and a good way to be reminded of the virtues of songs like this that could easily be overlooked.
Given that there are so many songs to choose from, a musician has to come prepared. And, far from just throwing songs out there, Hitchcock was working from a neatly-lettered, carefully delineated setlist. But the idea that the course of the show was so decidedly predetermined was undermined by his verbal asides, always an essential part of his live performances, where the audience gets some real-time samples of his off-kilter worldview. That banter is truly of a piece with his songs.
Stuff like "I Often Dream Of Trains" might seem rather like folk to the casual observer, Hitchcock took pains to comment, "You can tell that is is basically rock'n'roll and not folk music — but I can't explain how". Well — discuss amongst yourselves, I guess. It was nearly a half-hour into the show before he got to something from his new album (the agreeable Propellor Time), playing "Luckiness" as well as "Ordinary Millionaire", a co-write with Johnny Marr6.
And then, just continuing the journey, mixing older songs with more recent ones and "hits" with deeper cuts. Before the main set's finale of "(A Man's Gotta Know His Limitations) Briggs", there was a bravado burst of banter, wherein Hitchcock gave a five-minute discourse on Magnum Force, the song's inspiration.
That made for an eighty-minute set, which was followed by "a couple songs in my record collection", a four-song, all-cover encore, visiting some kindred-spirited inspirations, touching on Syd Barrett (a slowed-down and mellow "Terrapin") and The Incredible String Band ("Nightfall") as well as The Doors and Nick Drake. The closing reading of "River Man" was a rather lovely note to go out on. A fabulous show, and done early enough for some further adventures on the night.7
You can check out a couple tracks from this show here and here — and because the banter is such a big part of the appeal, I've included a snippet of that along with the latter.
1 Not even counting his compilations of rarities, demos and out-takes, which out-number & out-perform many artists' main discographies. Or live releases, of which there are several. And that's not even mentioning his early work with his pre-solo band The Soft Boys, which is worthy and influential on its own. His discography is so deep that it's gratifying to find an online database to aid in navigating through it.
2 There are several Sunbears out there, but Boothman is this one.
3 Which is getting a release party at The Horseshoe on Thursday, September 16, 2010, with Eiyn Sof — who has also just released a fantastic album — as one of the openers.
4 On not having merch, he later commented that there might be some available at the next afternoon's in-store performance: "I have no idea if they have it... they may have this record in stock... but there's millions of records, really — y'know, if you bought a Sister Sledge record, it's essentially the same stuff. The message is fine-tuned. Or you may listen to Local Natives... essentially it's all the same stuff — it's all a cry for help." The latter reference hints that Hitchcock probably has more of a grip on contemporary music than most of his audience.
5 Another sign of his awareness of how things work in today's techno-obsessed society, Hitchcock realizes that spontaneous moments on the stage tend to have an afterlife these days. At one point, pausing to adjust his hair between songs, he commented, "you see these things on YouTube and your quiff isn't together — God help Kennedy if he was assassinated these days." [long beat, looks at his fingernails] "Wouldn't've been in one take, that's for sure."
6 You should check out the stop-motion video for this one, which visually fits quite nicely with Hitchcock's style very well, as well as featuring Marr's lovely shimmering guitar.
7 And testifying further to the depth of his catalogue, he played a completely different set on the next night's show of the two-night stand. Had I not been occupied elsewhere, I'd have had no reluctance to buy a ticket for that second show as well — and there's not a lot of people that I can say that about.
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