Cause But My Heart Doesn't Break Anymore...I Often Dream of Trains--Robyn Hitchcock

Heading For Paradise...Or Baskingstoke...Or Reading...

It's Halloween Eve Eve and I decided to share my thoughts on one of my favorite albums ever, an album I consider to be the quintessential album of Fall. When I listen to this album I visualize swirling leaves, dark evenings, brisk walks through the forest, cold rain on city streets. I Often Dream of Trains is one of Robyn Hitchcock's greatest, on a par with the magnificent Underwater Moonlight which he made as leader of The Soft Boys. Pastoral, Urban, Psychedelic, Medieval, Surreal, there is something for everyone and sounds like nothing else. And it holds together so well that it sounds like a concept album. No wonder that YepRoc has released a recent live performance of these songs in New York, accompanied by a Dvd.

Probably about the time of this record's release I saw Robyn perform for the first time. Another serendipitous accident. I was home from school, and I was in the Tower Records that used to be at 4th and Broadway in New York to do some shopping. There was an announcement that Robyn Hitchcock and the Egyptians was going to make an in-store appearance that afternoon. So I waited, and waited. Apparently the band got caught in crosstown traffic and was running late. They did a short mostly a cappella set, which included Furry Green Atom Bowl, and the thoroughly amazing Uncorrected Personality Traits from I Often Dream of Trains. He also did a bizarre rendition of the 50's classic by the Monotones Book of Love with wonderful backing vocals, like a dadaist barber shop quartet. I've seen him several times since, including at Maxwell's in Hoboken, for the brief Soft Boys reunion about ten years ago, and trust me, he is a great live performer. And very funny. Go see him if he is within a radius of 100 miles of your home town.

Dream of Trains is a very reflective album, and a lot of the surreal imagery about things like crabs, Victorian squids and ooze are tuned down here. Don't get me wrong--I like that Daliesque aspect of his songwriting, but I think these songs have hurt his street cred somewhat. I think that people who aren't paying enough attention use this as a way to trivialize his music. But Hitchcock uses such imagery as foils and surrogates to illustrate and illuminate our human condition. Others people who aren't fans (and probably not real music fans at all) level accusations that his 30 odd album and 30 year career is futile exercise in aping Syd Barrett. I saw a review recently where someone said this album was terrible, and that he couldn't sing. The guy who wrote that should think about a new career in my opinion. I concede that musical enjoyment is all about opinion and personal taste, but I don't know what that person was hearing that I can't hear at all. Enjoying music isn't about taking sides--a lot of this conjecture is like tilting with windmills. Clearly this is a lo-fi album, probably recorded on a small budget, but that still does not detract from its myriad of charms.

The album begins and ends with the instrumental Nocturne. The second track is the bizarre Sometimes I Wish I Was A Pretty with its plinking piano counterpoint. It's a nice reflection on male adolescent sexuality and voyeurism, like that Monty Python skit about the girl who you know....she likes to... you know...Odd and humorous songs like this are interspersed with serious beautiful chamber songs like Cathedral and jazzy supper club balladry like Flavour Of Night. Of course, lyrics like You..yeah, you, with your Ice Cream Hands, sets him apart from the lyricism of Tin Pan Alley. Even further out there are the surreal a cappella lyrics of Furry Green Atom Bowl.The only song I dislike is Mellow Together--the song is actually pretty good but the vocals are terrible. Judging my the lyrical content, it seems the intent was to mock hippies, but it is the only sour note I find on this album.

The aforementioned Uncorrected Personality Traits, is beyond any of your expectations. It is literally a amusing send up of psychiatry and human behavior. And pulled off with a jaunty music hall a cappella style.
A spoon full of sugar to help get down the social satire. Similar psychoanalysis is expressed in the spikily syncopated case studies of Sounds Great When You're Dead.  There are medievalisms on this album like the gutbucket Ye Sleeping Knights of Jesus, which gives organized religion and politics a few good sharp pokes to the ribcage. Bones In The Ground similarly would not feel out of place at a Renaissance Fair or at a Halloween Party. There is air of dissolution and decay on this records, and the Fall metamorphosis leading to Winter is equally a metaphor for time and aging. When you hear a song like Winter Love you can feel the coming chill in your bones.

This sentiment is evident in the nostalgia of songs like I Often Dream of Trains, and Trams of Old London. The imagery found on this album gives the music a truly cinematic quality. Equally affecting is the paean to architecture, My Favorite Buildings. Songs like these also give the music a geographical appellation. I would consider this a very English album not exclusive to Robyn's London, though at its essence the subject matter has a universality to it.

The beautiful I Used To Say I Love You is very emblematic of this accessibility and is one my favorite songs here. Autumn is Your Last Chance is also one of the standouts also, a poignant disquisition on heartache, disappointment and lost illusions. The melodies on songs like these are simply unforgettable, and they stick in my head for hours. Definitely one of my Hibernian Island Discs.

If you like John Lennon, Syd Barrett, The Byrds, Odessey and Oracle-era Zombies, or Nick Drake's Pink Moon, you are going to love this album. For me, listening to this record is a rite of passage from Autumn to Winter, and one of the classic albums of the 80's.