Element Of Light

After listening to the two albums back to back, I think that Element Of Light, Robyn Hitchcock's second studio album with the Egyptians, is stronger than Fegmania!, his first Egyptians album.

Fegmania! sounds like Robyn Hitchcock with various backing musicians, while Element Of Light sounds like the work of a band called Robyn Hitchcock & the Egyptians. Andy and Morris sound more plugged in to Robyn's songs, and the keyboard player stays out of the way for the most part. Pat Collier's production also doesn't overwhelm the songs, which are some of the best of Robyn's career (the "Airscape", "Bass", "Never Stop Bleeding" trio always slays me).

Element of Light was the album that started Robyn's reign atop the U.S. college charts (back when they had "college charts") and this "floating hat" video of "Raymond Chandler Evening" even got some regular MTV airplay.



When I went through my Robyn Hitchcock records yesterday, I found a couple of 12-inch singles that I don't remember buying. One was "If You Were A Priest" b/w "Tell Me About Your Drugs"/"The Crawling"/"The Can Opener" (all bonus tracks on the EOL cd), and another is "Bells of Rhymney" b/w "I'm Only You", which may have been the first Egyptians release (c-1984, but sounds like the Fegmania! sessions). "Bells" (a Pete Seeger track) is credited to "trad. arr McGuinn" and sounds like a straight copy of the Byrds version. Now a bonus track on Fegmania!.