Robyn Hitchcock and the Egyptians—Fegmania!

Robyn Hitchcock and the Egyptians—Fegmania! (1985)

Fegmania!—The Soft Boys broke up sometime in early 1981, leaving Robyn Hitchcock to pursue an equally odd solo career and Kimberley Rew to move toward the mainstream with Katrina and the Waves. It's peculiar that Rew went on to write most of that band's material, including the hit "Walking on Sunshine," considering Hitchcock wrote almost everything for the Soft Boys. Rew was hardly disposable as a Soft Boy; the dynamics of his and Hitchcock's guitar playing had a quality that neither party ever quite replicated. Still, the Soft Boys were definitely Hitchcock's band, as evidenced by the split, and his Black Snake Dîamond Röle (1981), Groovy Decay (1982), and I Often Dream of Trains (1984) were natural extensions of the Soft Boys' run. Upon hearing a re-released version of the EP Give It to the Soft Boys, Hitchcock decided to get back with that rhythm section (drummer Morris Windsor and bassist/keyboardist Andy Metcalfe, plus newcomer Roger Jackson, also on keyboards), and thus the Soft Boys were reborn as the Egyptians.

"What is Fegmania? It has come for your sister. Also for your husband, that kindly man with something poking out of his head. It has come for your arms, and it will change your concept of hygiene. It may be the sound of a plane crash-landing in a ploughed field, or salad cream being tipped out of an attic window. There are stars, minds and judges—people in scarlet rags that pull frogs out of each other's mouths. FEGMANIA RISES! Light pulsing from a bruised sun that eats into tired rugs. Light coursing from a swarming moon that careens in frozen ecstasy across the sky—naked people oozing on warm mud with the radio tuned to Venus. Here is music to implode by. Here is FEGMANIA! A turnip in a sliver box. A dromedary lurching through the House of Commons. A bank manager shooting himself in the navel with a water-pistol. A Royal baby with permanent amnesia. A vampire at the Cenotaph. Respectable people with uncontrollable urges, freed only by the disconnection of their hands. A nun writing her name in marmalade on a soldier's leg. One word." —Liner notes to Fegmania!

Fegmania! sounds like an anomaly, but it was actually Hitchcock's most straightforward music to date, less introspective, all arranged the same way. It is led by "Egyptian Cream," the new band's de facto theme song, a surrealistic, almost Biblical tale of hormone-altering topical cream. "Another Bubble" expresses feelings of isolation in relationships that ultimately lead to rifts. The psychedelic "I'm Only You" is a paradoxical ego-fantasy reminiscent of Revolver. The funny, sad, hypnagogic "My Wife and My Dead Wife," cleverly backed with theremin and percussion idiophones, is an emotionally mixed account of not being able or willing to chase the ghost of a loved one. "Goodnight I Say" is a characteristic stream-of-consciousness Hitchcock composition.

"The Man with the Lightbulb Head," which is something like the title cut (the album cover is taken from the song's video, a home movie directed by Hitchcock), is heavy-handed and silly ("I'm the man with the light-bulb head/I turn myself on in the dark"), but delivered earnestly enough to succeed. "Insect Mother," an I Often Dream of Trains holdover, is a Tim Burton-esque love nightmare. The bright, infectious "Strawberry Mind" was a sign that the Egyptians were ready for college radio prime-time. "Glass" is a sort of vague statement on transparency, and "The Fly" is some quasi-progressive mood piece. The uplifting "Heaven," one of his greatest songs ever, is based around a classic half-real, half-imaginary Hitchcock story he once spun thus:

"This is the floating Cathedral [of the] Prairie's song... it used to be sung by the old prospectors when they were waiting for the Cathedral to arrive. Back in the '20s when the Bechtel Corporation used to take cheap labor out into the desert to complete its massive projects—big dams and so forth—the men weren't paid very much, and they couldn't get any liquor, so they used to sit outside in groups in circles, and they'd wait for the Cathedral to come by: big, floating, transparent glass cathedral lit by columns of light from underneath. And when it came by, they'd all stiffen and howl: 'You've got heaven...'" —Intro to "Heaven," live, date unknown, as heard on the CD reissue of Fegmania!

Fegmania! kick-started a new part of Robyn Hitchcock's career that resulted in five more albums with the Egyptians, which ran concurrently with his solo albums. Although there is a sense that Hitchcock was just settling back into the groove of things, with some of its songs being a tad slight, Fegmania! is nonetheless a career highlight and a record of inspiration.

Robyn Hitchcock—I Often Dream of Trains

Robyn Hitchcock—I Often Dream of Trains

I Often Dream of Trains—Although Black Snake Dîamond Röle (1981) and Groovy Decay (1982) were respectable beginning entries to his solo career, Robyn Hitchcock lacked a model record the caliber of Underwater Moonlight. It wasn't for lack of talent, of course, as Hitchcock was the principal songwriter of the Soft Boys, but having a band around him seemed to focus his music. The songs on Röle and Decay were sometimes labored or stiff, if principally strong, though the latter was perceived poorly and Hitchcock would fall into recession over the next couple years.

He reemerged in 1984 with I Often Dream of Trains, which was his first largely solo-performed and acoustic or piano-led album. He took the opportunity to explore new moods in his music. Whereas his prior work was a tense, warped new wave, Trains was subdued and moribund; he opens the album with a simple, pensive nocturne, simply titled "Nocturne (Prelude)." Hitchcock does retain his characteristic eccentricity, however, as evidenced by the creeping "Sometimes I Wish I Was a Pretty Girl," where he confides, "Sometimes I wish I was a pretty girl/So I could [inaudible] myself in the shower." On the conflicted "Cathedral," he struggles to understand another being with a hint of derision: "Like a toilet from outside/A cathedral from inside/There, behind your open face/Lies an awful lot of space."

"Uncorrected Personality Traits" runs through a litany of intriguing psychological pitfalls in under two minutes, commenting on how, as the first lines of the song put succinctly, "uncorrected personality traits that seem whimsical in a child may prove to be ugly in a fully grown adult." He also serves up the curious thought, "Even Marilyn Monroe was a man/But this tends to get overlooked/By our mother-fixated, overweight, sexist media," which is not as ludicrous as it initially sounds. "Sounds Great When You're Dead" is a somewhat lesser song where Hitchcock experiments with a particular arrangement, while the surrealist "Flavour of Night" echoes David Bowie's Diamond Dogs. "Ye Sleeping Nights of Jesus" highlights the futility of waiting for miracles; "This Could Be the Day" pays tribute to the Velvet Underground.

"Trams of Old London," an effectively immersive folk song, sees Hitchcock take his partner around London. "Furry Green Atom Bowl" is something like an alchemist's rendition of "Sixteen Tons." "Heart Full of Leaves," an instrumental, and "Autumn Is Your Last Chance," a haunting song with a lonely lyric, could have fit on an early Cure album. Title cut and high point "I Often Dream of Trains" wraps up the themes of autumn and longing as well as the romanticizing of trains before the album ends nearly the same way it began, with a slightly livelier "Nocturne (Demise)."

I Often Dream of Trains marked an artistic rebirth for Robyn Hitchcock, which is strange considering its status as something of an anomaly in his oeuvre. He recorded nothing quite like it across the rest of the decade, instead choosing to effectively reform the Soft Boys (minus Kimberley Rew as the Egyptians) and record more electric material. It is characteristic of Hitchcock as the folk singer he always wanted to be, and despite its radically different style from the rest of his '80s work, it is rightfully considered a career highlight: melodic, wryly humorous, and ardently performed.