Moss Elixir

In 1996, Robyn Hitchcock signed to Warner Brothers and released Moss Elixir. As he did when he signed with A&M eight years previously, Robyn wrote a note to listeners about his new album.

This is my latest attempt to make a real record-- something to listen to, rather than music that helps you buy clothes. The last two albums I made with the Egyptians seemed too airtight, in retrospect. I had originally wanted Respect to be recorded with the musicians sitting around the table and singing into a bowl of fruit; somehow, production, budgets and musicianship all intervened to make a far more dense record than some of the songs warranted.

Hindsight is a groovy bedfellow. But it left me all the more determined to add only what was NECESSARY next time I went into the studio. When I started recording the songs for Moss Elixir, I had no deal, no producer and no money for a band. So I was able to build the tracks up slowly. "Filthy Bird," for instance, was recorded in June, 1994. By the following July, I could afford to fly Deni Bonet over from New York to play violin on it.

Having played a lot of shows alone, or with Deni on violin, I've gotten used to filling the stage by myself. Also, after 20 years, I can finally hear what I'm doing. So I've lost the band habit. But a few of the songs seemed to need a rhythm section, so for these, Tim Keegan kindly lent me his group, Homer. Drummer Patch Hannan also plays with the Sundays, and Jake Kyle is bassist with the Blue Aeroplanes.

I've never been a sax fiend, mainly because of the way the saxophone is deployed; the ghastly mellow tootling as the lovers ooze through Central Park in corporate movies, or the brassy squiggles that emerge whenever a rock act is wealthy enough to afford extra musicians. But, on the fringe of the horn scene, dwell some interesting souls. Ntchuks Bonga has made an album, Tshisha , that creates a vivid emotional landscape using sax, cello and percussion. I was lucky enough to track him down to add flock-of-birds horns to "Devil's Radio." My ancient friend James Fletcher, played and arranged art-horns on "DeChirico Street." Dave Woodhead, a regular contributor to Billy Bragg, added his cascading trumpets to "Beautiful Queen."

This project has no production as such. I've produced it inasmuch as that I've caused it to exist. Pat Collier, veteran of numerous Soft Boys and Egyptians sessions, came in to help out with the band tracks. My partner, Michele Noach, has listened to every prospective tape that has gone into this thing, and she has steered it with me towards the magical gates of release. But I always associate the word "production" with some kind of sheen--a sugar buzz patina that has the listener lying on their back, almost licking the record: and there is none of that here. In that respect, I think this is a real record.

Robyn Hitchcock, May 1996

After being overloaded by the unwise recording choices on the last few Egyptians albums, I had high hopes for Moss Elixir, especially after hearing the songs performed live. I even took the plunge during its release week and subscribed to the fegmaniax email list, to get some "true fan" observations about the new record.

I was astounded to find out that almost everyone on the feglist hated the album: "it's not as good as the songs are live", "it's not as good as Mossy Liquor" (vinyl version that I still haven't heard), "it's not as good as Respect, and that sucked too!". I've never seen a group of fans be so down on a particular album. I think I just joined the list on a bad hair week, when all the obnoxious members (obnoxious guy who didn't like Brian Wilson - check, obnoxious guy who didn't like Scott Miller & the Loud Family - check, obnoxious right wingnuts who thought Billy Bragg was a pinko commie who should be shot - double check!) were front and center. Needless to say, I've never had a more negative opinion of anything than my opinion of the fegmaniax mailing list in August 1996, and ended up sending "getmeouttahere" to majordomo to get off that list as fast as I could!

This experience soured me on Robyn Hitchcock for at least a year, until I realized that I didn't need to be a fan of Robyn's fans to be a Robyn fan (say that three times fast!). And Moss Elixir isn't a bad album, it's actually a pretty good one, but it suffers from a lack of variety, so it's kind of challenging for me to listen to all the way through in one sitting. Maybe those fegs were right?

Here's a Storefront take of one of my favorites from the album "Devil's Radio".