10 Robyn Hitchcock And The Egyptians

Gotta Let This Hen Out!

MIDNIGHT MUSIC, 1985

You say: “One of the great live LPs – a fast and furious performance, a perfect setlist.” Melissa B, via e-mail.

Hitchcock’s career is paved with brilliant live LPs – 1978’s Live At The Portland Arms captures The Soft Boys’ early absurdist Cambridge cabaret, 2000’s Storefront Hitchcock is a glossier soundtrack to Jonathan Demme’s concert film – but this set is the pick of wish-youwere-here shows. Recorded at London’s Marquee on April 27, 1985, the band perform with an oozing intensity, starting with the Psycho-delic Sometimes I Wish I Was A Pretty Girl. It’s also the place to hear off-grid favourites Listening To The Higsons and neolithic lament Only The Stones Remain.

9 Robyn Hitchcock

Moss Elixir

WARNER BROS, 1996

You say: “Mostly reflective, sometimes demented. At the frontier of the rhyming dictionary, ‘darlin’’ is paired with ‘Stalin’.” Backwards 7, via Twitter

Three years had passed since the release of Hitchcock’s last LP, Respect, during which he had switched labels and technically disbanded The Egyptians. If Moss Elixir has “transitional record” etched into it, though, that doesn’t mean it’s insubstantial. The greenish shadow of 1990’s Eye falls across it, but Heliotrope and Sinister But She Was Happy swing more towards The Incredible String Band rhapsodies than Nick Drake despair. It also houses the mists-and-mellow-fruitfulness folk of You And Oblivion, a song about encroaching nothingness that might come as close as anything to Hitchcock’s core values: “Something about you/Youand oblivion.”