Nothing Confusing...

Robyn Hitchcock's latest album, The Confuser, is out today.

I've been listening to Hitchcock since 1989 and going to his shows since about 1992. I've got everything that's gottenable and some things which aren't. I've probably seen him live over 40 times in at least a dozen cities. I can't carry a tune, and people wail and cry when I try, but I find music to be deeply inspirational for my own art in a different arena. The melodies and lyrics Hitchcock has crafted over the years have definitely sunk into my brain pan and seeped back out in ways and forms he'd never recognize or expect. To date I'd say his eponymously titled 2017 Robyn Hitchcock was my favorite. I don't know how The Confuser will stack up against this until I've listened to it a few hundred times, though I'm on my fourth listen already, and I realize this one is also eponymously titled.

Hitchcock calls The Confuser "the most realised album I have yet made." He's working with a slew of new-to-him musicians, and a few familiar faces, and the result is a sound that doesn't quite sound like anything he's done before. The first three tracks—"I Am This Thing," "My Dead Astronaut", and "Yesterday's Rain" —were all teased before the release, one of them quite a long time ago in demo form. They are all rockin', in a very young-old way that's both mature and energetic. They set a tone that the rest of the album then turns around and yanks the rug out from under. From the mellow-reflective "Breathless" to the whimsical sing-song of "Monday for Me" we bounce around the spectrum in a, dare I say it, confusion of moods and melodies. All of which hangs together beautifully well.

Hitchcock is like a fish that swims in one very broad channel that never leaves his early influences far behind (The Beatles, Syd Barret, Captain Beefheart, et al.). But with this album he's definitely noodling to the edges of his temperature zone. Through all this, his facility with gripping and enigmatic lyrics are a constant.

"I met an ugly man / His face was raw / He said demolition was 9/10ths of the law / I pulled my thermometer / From his silent head / You don't get a reading / When the patient was dead. How you getting out of here alive? / There's nothing on the surface / And there's nothing underneath / How are you getting out of here alive? / I miss democracy like my / Wisdom teeth" — "Building From the Ruins"

Right now, the above track, "My Dead Astronaut", and "Monday for Me" are my favorites, but I expect most and probably all of these songs to jockey for the number one spot and switch places on me like musical chairs. Hitchcock writes that "For me songs either appear or they don’t— if I try to force them into being, I’m rewarded with counterfeit ones: fake songs that have no true identity or core." This is a magnificent work, a very solid core, and I'm eager to let it go to work on me and see what manifests. I recommend letting it go to work on you too.

You can stream The Confuser here, but I hope you'll buy it on Bandcamp here.