Robyn Hitchcock?

I think Sartorial is just the UK label, no? I can't imagine the Yep Roc thing going kaput at this moment...?

'City Of Women' first came out in 2003 on the Hedwig & The Angry Inch tribute album Wig In A Box (though it's an RH original) and judging from the personnel on the track (Kimberly, Paul Noble on bass, Terry Edwards) it must have been recorded around then. Love that fuckin' song so much.

Oddly, there's no listing for it yet on the Yep Roc site. You would think with it out in less than six weeks the promotion would be starting.

yeah, someone on a RH mailing list emailed yep roc and they said they don't have plans to release it ... maybe it'll be available on his Web site? Hopefully not at ridic import prices ...

Whoa that's crazy. I thought the RH/Yep relationship was quite fruitful for both parties. At least Sartorial is on eMusic, so I can get it that way, hopefully close to the release date...

yeah, it seems weird -- thanks to that Demme movie, Robyn's profile is at least a little bigger than usual, I'd think.

And this album has marketable guest John Paul Jones on it...

and Johnny Marr! And Peter Buck! And Nick Lowe! It's like Yep Roc catnip ...

i could have seen robyn play live a at a midsized club when i last went to the states, but i skipped it - probably had a date or was drinking with my buds, but i'm still kicking myself over that

for me i often dream of trains is the untouchable classic, but pretty much every album he's made's got a decent-to-great song or 4 on it... madonna of the wasps springs to mind, my wife and my dead wife, that one really haunting one off of eye, i should probably dig up more of his back catalogue actually...

damn, the links to rarities collections and live shows links all seem dead, too bad!

Go on archive.org and you'll find a wealth of shows to download, with RH's permission.

I was able to get the Sartorial released Shadow Cat at my local store for around $14. Hopefully I can do the same for Propeller Time.

Sartorial is Terry Edwards's label - reserving this album just for him may have been Robyn returning a favor or just wanting to help his mate.

The rarities links aren't dead - I just checked them!

"Haunting one off Eye" - man, that whole album is pretty haunting!

Quite a generous gift for Terry, then, bcuz if this lives up to its 30 second samples, it will be at minimum the equal of either of the foregoing Venus 3 records.

During the I Often Dream... concert in NYC, Robyn said that Terry Edwards actually WAS a Higson, something I never knew...

I looked into the Higsons years ago and wasn't moved but a few years ago I picked up their BBC sessions CD and it's fantastic!

http://www.amazon.com/Its-Wonderful-Life-Higsons/dp/B00004RDR1/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1266013421&sr=8-1

Wow that's the first positive Higsons comment I've heard!

Higsons were great! Especially if you particularly like the goofy twee post-punk funk bands from Norwich. I bought my first Higsons record because I was a Hitchcock fan, and never heard anything else about them for years and years. It Goes Waap! and Tear the Whole Thing Down are great.

the only song by them i ever heard was "run me down," which i could still hum, so there's that

The rarities links aren't dead - I just checked them!

my mistake, THATS what that popup window was demanding i sign up for divshare was about!

unfortunately:

"This file is not available to free users in China and Southeast Asia. To download it and any other DivShare file, sign up for a DivShare Personal account for just $12 / year!"

probably a recurring charge too.

i suppose $12 isn't really an unreasonable amount to pay for a double album of rarities by an artist i like though. god, should i actually sign up? i just spent $30 on itunes and i'm sorta on a big spender-type roll here...

Nice, long interview with Robyn about the new album (among other things) here: http://www.robynhitchcock.com/propellortime/interview/

Keep waiting for the new alb to pop up on eMusic, getting v annoyed. As always, am resolved to either buy or pay-to-DL when it comes to RH.

yeah, i just ordered it ... one of the few remaining artists I just buy whatever he puts out.

It's out overseas and in the wilds of the net. Have mine pre-ordered with the local shop so I don't mind acquiring a copy early. First listen - it's good, though not the straight forward pop of the last two. Some more experiments, some really stripped down intimate things, and an opener that reminded me of the Egyptians circa Respect. Plan on giving it another run through shortly; have to finish listening to a boot of Van Halen's USA Festival gig from '83 first.

priorities!

Tyler- have you seen the plethora of Soft Boys stuff up at Just Add Cones? Pretty neat to hear if poor sounding recordings from their first time 'round.

oh, nice, hadn't looked over there in a while! thanks!

*bookmarks furiously*

are the recordings *really* rough?

Mixed bag - they're mainly audience tapes, so some good, some atrocious. Haven't had a chance to hear them all - too much Van Halen!

Into my second listen through PT - I hadn't read the interview the first time, but thought some of these were vaguely familiar. Now I know why.

yeah, he's been playing a few of these live forever, and they feature in that IFC doc.

excited to hear the Soft Boys play "Run Run Run" on that Club 80s bootleg ... !

I know!

Hmmm so how many VU/Reed songs has Robyn done...?

Run, Run, Run (Soft Boys)
Caroline Says (SBs)
Train Coming Round The Bend (SBs)
New Age (solo in concert)

I KNOW i'm forgetting something...

i saw him do 'Some Kinda Love' live about a decade ago. It was one of those loose, all covers sets, don't know if it was off the cuff or something ...

when the hell are they gonna release a soft boys vinyl box set like the 2 hitchcock ones?

soon-ish? this year, maybe?

they've been saying that for a couple of years.. still no sign...

I think it's pretty solid the SB Yep Roc box will come out this year, though I don't know the contents. I'm sure some of the killer rarities from the ryko 2CD will go capriciously missing. I assume there will be a vinyl edition.

weird that even the Underwater Moonlight matador reissue seems to be out of print? You can only get it from the sellers on Amazon, anyway ... pretty much the same for everything else. Maybe the box set will spark a Soft Boys craze. More bands need to sound like them.

true... tbh I only heard them for the first time a couple of months back.. they were one of those groups that slipped through my net when I started seriously started getting in post-punk stuff in the late 80's.

They need to include 'Innocent Boy' in the extras this time. Best Softs song to have never seen a legit release IMO. (It was on the Invisible History boot).

yeah! that one is great. kind of ridiculous how prolific a songwriter Hitchcock was then. All high quality stuff -- even the rehearsals on the Underwater Moonlight reissue are gems.

Had a first listen today.

1- Star Of Venus: Great choice for an opener, despite its un-opener-like sombreness. Total fucking gem, maybe the RH song of the young century, definitely in the top 5.

2- The Afterlight: a relative letdown which never quite overcomes the feeling of being a 'Tiny Montgomery' homage.

3- Luckiness: great sound-feel and deliciously unfrantic banjo pluckin, but this list-song doesn't take off. Musical saw all over this track but it's not enough.

4- Ordinary Millionaire: Wow. Just ravishingly beautiful and harmonically interesting to boot. Kate St. John finally plays oboe on an RH song hurray! This is the one for which Johnny Marr wrote the guitar part. Killer.

5- John In The Air: Even better. Robyn finally fucking nails the albion folk ballad mode he's toyed with a few times before (cf The Speed Of Things). Slightly hallucinatory production with an absolutely game-clinching deployment of a forlorn handclap on every upbeat, giving it a kind of raga feel.

6- Propellor Time: ok, here's the bleak minor-mode gtr arpeggio with three part harmony vox number for this album. Does it soar or crawl? It soars. RH has done this kind of song dozens of times before and rarely misses this particular target.

7- Primitive: An exercise in staggered vocals (3 or 4 robyns singing rounds)over strolly acoustic guitars. What the hell is that on the chorus? Some kind of treated accordion? This is awesome. It wins on sheer aural interestingness.

8- Sickie Boy- Chiming Byrdsfest over an interestingly tricky drum figure. Neat chorus that makes you wait two whole measures between its two short phrases. Way catchier than it seems, already worming my ear. Voices-and-drums only reprise of the chorus that sounds genuinely jubilant.

9- Born On The Wind: The old Neil Young/Meat Puppets II midtempo drumbeat arrives for a visit. Musical saw returns, but this time does its thing oh so subtly and much more affectingly. Goes down real easy and inspires contented head-nodding. RH gets in his memorable animal line of the album, ending a verse with 'the Da Vinci Cod'.

10- Evolove: Topical Robyn, taking Creationists to task with a minimum of pretension and more forgiveness than anger (we are very far away from 'Dear God' territory). Not on the level of the foregoing tracks, but good enough to make me wanna hear it again, and a grade above tracks 2 & 3.

So this is a fucking solid record with a better classic/dud ratio than any since Moss Elixir, and some of the coolest engineering of any RH record ever. Five definite keepers, and two more that immediately jump to all-time RH mixtape pantheon. As always with our boy, nice and short, no lengthier than an LP. I'm real happy.

nice! hopefully my copy shows up soon ...

I agree with you close to 100% on those write-ups Jon. "Star OF Venus" is his best opener since "Daisy Bomb". I thought "The Afterlife" was a "Yea Heavy and a Bottle of Bread" homage, but regardless of exact track it's cut-rate Basement Tapes material. Worst song on the record. I woke up singing the title track yesterday.

I forgot to mention abt 'Star Of Venus' in the phrase 'does it make you cryyyy' the cool way he makes the word 'cry' seem like its on a super dissonant note until the backing harmonies join in and make it a'ight. Love that.

I only had one quick listen and reserve judgement until another, but a few of these songs have already been released (not sure if they're different versions): The Afterlight, Luckiness, Sickie Boy. And Evolove is awfully familiar, was that in the "Sex & Death" docu?

And I must take issue with the suggestion that this could possibly be his best since "Moss Elixir" - "Ole Tarantula" was totally ace start to finish (as was "Jewels For Sophia").

great record.

(the songs that sounded familiar were in a documentary on hitchcock that was made last year or the year before, where it showed him recording some of these in his house)

hitchcock played evolove at robin ince's lessons in carols for godless people shows, which was broadcast on bbc4 over xmas...

Well, what I meant exactly was 'highest gem-to-dud ratio since Moss Elixir'. Ole Tarantula and Jewels For Sophia are both great and have very high highs, but contain a few songs each I never want to hear again.

It doesn't mean those can't be better albums, in a way. I mean, I rate Da Capo higher than Forever Changes even though Da Capo has a whole LP side of utter dudliness (no 'Revelations' challops please, you know it sucks).

Delighted by the new album, last night I finally got round to buying I Often Dream Of Trains Live In NYC off eMusic. I was at this concert, it was breathtaking (full disclosure I got all teary during 'Autumn Is Your Last Chance') and the live recording fully lives up to my memory of the event. Superbly recorded, with excellent sense of how the three musicians were spaced around the stage. Arrangements range from respectful of the original to completely rethought and transformed ('Winter Love', for example, becomes a weird psych-folk dreamscape with echoes, guitar fade-ins, and wordless melisma). Terry Edwards and Tim Keegan are fucking fantastic throughout. I like how Robyn just leaves out the album tracks he's bored with and replaces them with contemporaneous outtakes like 'That's Fantastic, Mother Church'.

The physical release is a DVD/CD combo which I would totally want if I hadn't been at the show-- this performance was really fun to watch and there was a minimal but evocative stage set.

Encores include the unfortunate 'Up To Our Nex' but you can't have everything...

this is nice as always

i'm not digging it quite as much as ole tarantula and there's no single song as good as 'goodnight oslo' but i'm glad he's still continuously making good albums