At the start of 2003, the post-9/11 malaise of the Bush recession provided me with some unintended free time, along with a few months of severance, so I decided spend a few weeks traveling in Europe. My week in London happened to coincide with Robyn Hitchcock's 50th birthday concert at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, an evening long celebration of his career, with past and future collaborators and cohorts.All 500 or so attendees of that QEH show were presented with a signed and numbered CDRs of Luxor, an solo acoustic album that Robyn recorded in honor of the occasion. This added a nice personal touch to the show, and I don't think Robyn ever intended for it to be a "real" album.
When I played Luxor the day after the show, it was a perfect soundtrack to a
Croydon morning with the sun through yellow curtains, milk and toast and honey, tea and oranges that came all the way from China, and other items from early Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen songs. The songs poured in like butterscotch and stuck to all my senses, and I listened to the album twice all the way through.
That was unfortunately a once in a lifetime experience, and after that curtain closed and the rainbow ran away, Luxor didn't sound as magical to me. Since it was a solo acoustic album, a lot of reviews compared it to Eye or I Often Dream Of Trains, but I think it's closer to You & Oblivion -- a bunch of songs on the same disc that wasn't intended to be "an album".
When I play Luxor now, there are a lot of things to like on the surface, like the sound of the guitars and voice, but when I try to listen to the album, I can't find anything there. Almost every song has the same tempo and the same modal guitar backing, and sounds more like the work of some earnest folkie at Wednesday night mic than the great Robyn Hitchcock.
It's almost disheartening to listen to Luxor as anything other than background music, but one keeper on the album (for me) is "Keep Finding Me", which wins my alphabetical award as the best Robyn Hitchcock song whose title starts with the letter K.
3 comments:
Ah context! I always refer to this as the one RH album I just never cottoned to, and now, out of context, I think that song is so lovely. You have inspired me to go back and listen and see what else I may have missed.
Great post, very funny.
Man, I was struggling to remember this album at all, but I do really like "You Remind Me Of You" quite a bit.
If I ever get to England i'll take it with me, though, and see if I can tap into some of that magic!
I have this album (signed! I bought it at a show!) but have only listened to it once and wrote it off as not worth-while. Thanks for filling me in on how it came about -- I think I'll give it another listen sometime -- though that will probably have to wait until the end of the period of utter infatuation with "Goodnight Oslo" in which I find myself right now, where it feels like a real sacrifice to listen to anything else...
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