Robyn Hitchcock – I
OFTEN DREAM OF TRAINS
You can’t accuse me
of being overly materialistic, but there are albums you love so much a digital
copy seems a travesty. You have to actually own them. In a record store, you
can’t go past them. Vinyl, CD or a fucking cassette. So that having loved this
album for more than five years and having never resisted singing along with
“Mellow Together”, I did not hesitate for one millisecond in The Morgan Arcade
in Cardiff.
You could probably
make a lame point about this album being patchy and uneven. You could – but
that would be missing the point. It’s classic Hitchcock to put the nervy,
quirky “Sometimes I Wish I Was A Pretty Girl” alongside the sheer beauty that
is “Cathedral”. Then there is this:
Then there is the
clinically gorgeous “Flavour Of Night” and the wistful and timeless “Trams Of
Old London” and, of course, the songwriting genius of “My Favourite Buildings”.
Living side by side with “Furry Green Atom Bowl”, which sounds exactly the way
that its title suggests.
I Often Dream Of Trains is the quintessential solo
Hitchcock album. There are times when you would prefer Black Snake Diamond Röle and there are times when you would prefer Eye or maybe Moss Elixir (“Man With A Woman’s Shadow” is an all-time favourite),
but this is the one you need to best understand the talent and the demented
charm of Robyn Hitchcock.
