The Big Green House

Sunday, November 17, 2002

 

Cutting off your legs won�t make you paint like Toulouse Latrec

This is something I should have included on Wednesday, I guess, but let�s throw it in today & pretend that it�s all of one piece, OK? Here goes:

Has anyone else noticed that Robyn Hitchcock�s lyrics have become somewhat less opaque as time goes by? Even I could work out that �Strings�, from Nextdoorland, is about terrorism (although I never would have gotten �Kiss me quickly on the roof / afterwards there�ll be no proof� as a reference to the people who jumped hand in hand from the WTC, unless I�d read this interview. Ditto with his explanation of �Lions And Tigers�) He�s still pretty obscure most of the time, though; for example, I�m not really sure what �La Cherite� is actually about, but it sets up a nicely melancholy mood. And what are we to make of the laundry list of sexual requests (�fuck me, darling� rim me, please��) in �Japanese Captain�? Just the fact that he�s willing to explain some of his lyrics is a big change for him, but that doesn�t mean he�s spelling things out.

If Hitchcock is an inscrutable cat, lyrically speaking, then Kimberley Rew is more of an affable dog. (I really do mean both comparisons in the best way possible. I�m not one of those cat-hating dog lovers, or vice-versa.)

Rew, along with Hitchcock, was one of the founding members of The Soft Boys. Post-Soft Boys, he had a reasonable amount of success as guitarist & writer with Katrina & The Waves. (And by the way, get over yourself. You know that at one point you had a 45 of �Walking On Sunshine�, if not the entire album, and you played the hell out of it. Confession is good for the soul, and besides, it�s not that awful an album. There are some real duds, to be sure, but �Red Wine & Whiskey� & �Do You Want Cryin�� get the job done in a fairly agreeable manner. Not to mention the original version of �Going Down to Liverpool�, which The Bangles covered to such good effect on All Over The Place - even if they did lift the solo from The Waves version almost note for note.)

His newest solo album, Great Central Revisited, is a pleasant, solid set of straight-forward British rock & roll. The emphasis is definitely British; songs deal with, among other things, a holiday in the English country (�Life Itself�), not selling out England to the Americans (�English Road�), the rapid disappearance of British railroads (�Great Central Revisited�)� are you seeing a pattern here? Even the tunes which are more universal in their subject matter, like �Heart of Things� or �Seven Stars�, tend to be filled with Britannic details. �Sick of Hearing About Your Drugs� and �Purple and Orange Stripes� are a little heavy-handed, but then again it�s hard to pull off socially conscious lyrics without sounding a bit silly.

And look who gets name-checked over the course of the album: not just Eddie Cochran, but J. B. Priestley and Samuel Coleridge. And I�m willing to bet that this is the first time anyone has ever devoted entire songs to both Screaming Lord Sutch and Philip Larkin, let alone on the same album.

Yeah, yeah. How does it sound? Well, it sounds pretty good, actually. It falls closer to Waves territory than Soft Boys, but don�t let that throw you. Rew is very good with a guitar in his hands � nothing flashy, but the guy knows what he�s doing. I�m reminded at times of Dave Edmunds, if that means anything to you. (If it doesn�t, shame on you.) The bassist for The Waves plays on most tunes, and Mr. Hitchcock shows up to lend a hand, providing slide guitar on one track & singing on another. It�s like a big family reunion. With guitars!

As a singer, Kimberley Rew is� a very good guitarist. Not that his voice is awful, mind you, just really nasal. I guess it sorta goes along with his pronounced English accent. What he lacks in beauty he makes up for in enthusiasm, which has a charm of its own. I was able to make the adjustment fairly quickly. I�ve certainly heard worse, and so have you. (That guy from Supertramp springs to mind.)

To sum up: it�s not an album that, upon first hearing, will make you drop everything and say, �My god, that�s fantastic!� Rather, it is something that grows on the listener. I�ve often found that those are the albums I return to more often than the immediate grabber � they tend to wear thin after a few plays. Besides, �June Barley� makes me bounce around like an idiot every time I hear it. It�s a little embarrassing on a crowded bus, but then I suppose that the American public just isn�t ready for my bold style of interpretive dance.

bmarkey 11/17/2002 07:37:00 PM