LIVE REVIEW : ROBYN HITCHCOCK AT THE VILLAGE UNDERGROUND 28/02/2013

This was second time I'd seen Robyn Hitchcock live. First time being in Aberdeen 3 years ago when he was touring on the back of his then current release "Propellor Time". The venue was so empty that they had to put tables in front of the stage to populate the place !!! Despite this rather slight turnout, Robyn and his band had put on a good show and he seemed pleased to have his childhood hero Mike Heron from The Incredible String Band opening for him.

Fast forward 3 years and things couldn't have been more different, the Village Underground was packed and there was no opening act due to the particular nature of the show. The gig was billed as a celebration of Hitchcock's 60th year on planet earth and a launch night for his latest LP "Love from London". Hitchcock was planning on playing one song from every album he has put out and the basic guitar-drums-bass line-up was "beefed up" with a cellist, 2 back-up singers and a keyboard player. While working his way anti clockwise through his back-catalogue, he was joined by some musician friends, the most well known being Nick Lowe. Though being nice in a kind of "pat in the back" way, the guests didn't bring much to the proceedings. The gig would have been as good without them but maybe they brought extra people through the door.

The set was divided in two halves, first one going from 2013 to 1991, ending with Nick Lowe's appearance on two songs (one of them described by Hitchcock as "a Beatles song I wrote in 1990") and the second one ending with a track from the first Soft Boys album. I'm not familiar with Hitchcock's catalogue but I managed to find a couple of songs on the web afterwards that. There was a really good version of "Ordinary Millionaire" from the "Propellor Time" album. My favourite performance of the night was a song written about his wife called "Queen Jane Approximately" which featured a nice coda with Hitchcock duelling with former Soft Boys guitar player Kimberley Rew. Most of the songs where introduced with with a short speech, "Brenda Iron Sledge" from his first solo album was described as having been written after seiing Captain Beefheart's last London gig in Victoria.