Photos by Getty ImagesOnline review by 'A Gig's A Gig'In 2008, surrealadelic troubadour Robyn Hitchcock visited the Arctic in the company of other artists, musicians and writers to see for themselves the effects of glaciers retreating due to climate change. You can read his musings about the experience here, but tonight’s show spotlighted his musical responses to the trip and took us on a journey through maritime songs old and new.
The evening kicked off with Robyn singing his own song The Ghost Ship, followed by traditional seafaring song Polly On The Shore. Despite Robyn’s modest admission that his guitar-playing on the latter song would be inferior to Martin Carthy’s version, I think it’s often overlooked how good and expressive a guitarist Robyn is.
He was then joined by lusty folk-singer Kathryn Williams (heavily ‘with child’) for a gentle version of her Winter Is Sharp, followed by a rousing rendition of The Ballad Of Easy Rider, for which they’re joined by a full band. Robyn then turned to two sea-related songs of his own, The Wreck Of The Arthur Lee and Luminous Rose. The first half of the show was rounded off by a shaky but moving duet of traditional sailors’ song The Bay Of Biscay.
These one-off events can often be spoiled by a lack of focus or indeed a lack of rehearsal, but the rough edges don’t really matter in this case. As Robyn said, in one of his many surreal inter-song monologues, the evening was meant to be liquid rather than cut-and-dried like the ghastly thrusting angular shoulder-padded 80s…. Yes, he went off on one.
For the second half, Robyn donned his trademark polka-dot shirt (his shirt for the first half was a surprisingly restrained blue floral number) and launched into his song Oceanside. Special guest Graham Coxon then took centre stage for a very pretty Brave The Storm, followed by a full band Caspian Sea, which bloomed into a droning proggish epic. Robyn followed that perfectly with a hypnotic hazy version of the Velvet Underground’s Ocean.
The last special guest, KT Tunstall (who was also on the Arctic trip), now took to the stage to sing a fine a cappella ‘whale song’ which she’d written on the trip and premiered another new song with Robyn.
After a few more lusty shanties, the evening finished with a group rendition of traditional West Indian shanty Shallow Brown. Robyn encored brilliantly with his old song Underwater Moonlight in all its squiddy glory:
“He was pink and she was pinkAnd onward they did row,Didn’t see the giant squid, though,It was fairly slow,When they hit the bottom they were well and truly dead,The statues took their place, and then they rode back home instead…”A bon voyage was had by all.
Online review by Whiskyfun.comA couple of years ago, Robyn Hitchcock went on an Arctic expedition, courtesy of Cape Farewell, a charity dedicated to engineering “a cultural response to climate change”. He sailed in good company, including from the musical world Jarvis Cocker, K T Tunstall (she was on her honeymoon with husband Luke Bullen) Laurie Anderson and Martha Wainwright.
Why? Well, according to Hitchcock’s blog, “as the scientists aboard research the effects of ice-melt on the ocean bed, and trace the possible mutation of the Gulf stream through salination tests, we artists are being exposed to a landscape that cannot fail to affect our work …we will take the story back with us and spread it like butter on the toast of our item-rich society”. And tonight, a ‘Maritime Evening’ presented by Hitchcock as part of the Shift Festival, (Artists’ take on Climate Change) is part of the spreading.
For an evening in support of such a hot topic, there was a strange absence of propaganda or proselytizing; perhaps Hitchcock was leaving the music to speak for itself, aided of course by some of his occasional outbursts (“Humanity is doomed, but it’ll make no difference in the long run”). He began with a jaunty rock and roll sea shanty (something about a ghost ship as I recall), followed by a version of Martin Carthy’s ‘Polly on the shore’ (“but not with his ridiculously complicated tunings”), when he was joined by cellist Jenny Adejayan, whose playing added a very distinctive and haunting character to several songs.
This was followed by Hitchcock’s ‘Raining twilight coast’, and the subversive ‘Wreck of the Arthur Lee’ (a tribute to the great, if not unpredictably late Mr Lee, whose response was also unpredictable: “"I'll wreck HIM!" and "I'm gonna kick his *#!& ass!". Then, "I don't care if he's ALFRED Hitchcock...I'm gonna mess him up"). By this time Hitchcock had been joined by his current UK touring band, and on acoustic and electric guitars Graham Coxon, looking every bit like rock and roll’s answer to Alan Bennett. Coxon was followed by the very pregnant and very tuneful Kathryn Williams who sang her own ‘Winter is sharp’ (about the hardship of life in fishing communities), and duetted with Hitchcock on ‘The Grey Funnel Line’. Adding depth to her performance were the two backing singers (names sadly unknown) who, as with Adejayan’s cello, added a real presence to the evening. One provided beautiful harmonies to Hitchcock’s voice as they played ‘Bay of Biscay’ at the end of the first set.
The evening continued in a similar vein: the two backing singers opened the second half with a pretty ‘Drop the anchor’. Hitchcock sang ‘Oceanside’ from his album Perspex Island, with some very loud guitar from Graham Coxon, who then picked his way through ‘Brave the storm’, and blasted through ‘Caspian Sea’, both from the Spinning Top album. KT Tunstall arrived on stage (a diminutive yet powerful presence) fresh from finishing her new album in Berlin and sang first ‘Slow motion rock’, then an unaccompanied, and very cleverly written composition on the fate of the hunted whale, followed by a song that may have been called ‘Greenland’ or ‘Qeqertarsuaq’, or ‘Uummannaq’, inspired by one of the towns visited on the Cape Farewell adventure. Remember the name: it was, we were assured, a world exclusive. And Hitchcock then played his Arctic composition, ‘There goes the ice’, which sort of speaks for itself, before the ensemble returned for a rousing finish of his ‘Underwater moonlight’, giant octopus and all. This was a thoroughly enjoyable show, full of wit and pathos and some great performances. But very notable, I should not forget to say, was Hitchcock’s singing, as he spent the evening launching himself at a succession of impossibly high and low notes with great verve and aplomb. He is a performer well worth the price of a ticket (unlike Emile Heskey, perhaps) and tours the UK and the USA soon.
And where are the photographs, I hear you say? Ask Big Colin. The last time I saw him was in the middle of a skirmish outside the famous Embassy Suites in Tottenham, simultaneously ejecting three hoodlums from a party. He’s like an Anglo-Saxon Mike Tyson on steroids and angry pills with a neck like a very, very big bull. No doubt sent to the wrong place but he’s here, prowling at the front of the stage at the QEH, hands clasped menacingly in front of his stomach. When he saw a hapless soul just in front of us pull a camera from a pocket he simply leant forward and bit it in half, handing the two pieces back to the hapless snapper. Discretion, we decided, was very much the better part of valour on this occasion. Thanks, Big Colin.