Robyn Hitchcock, Goodnight Oslo
Disenchanted and enchanting, pitch-black and sparkling — in other words, vintage Hitchcock
Robyn Hitchcock has written love songs and drug songs, creepy songs and disenchanted songs, but "TLC" is his first creepy, druggy, disenchanted love song. Composed for an unfinished biopic about Beatles manager Brian Epstein, "TLC" explores the unfortunate similarities between romance and pharmacological imbalance. "I feel on top of the world/And you're my opposite girl," Hitchcock drawls against a woozy, '50s slow-dance melody that lurches like a drunk on a precarious reel toward the floor. By the time he reaches the chorus, he's lost track of the source of his euphoria: "Tryptisol, librium, carbitol," he recounts, naming antidepressants that were implicated in the deaths of Epstein and Nick Drake.
"TLC" is just one of the many semi-disturbing moments on Goodnight Oslo, a sequel of sorts to Hitchcock's 2006 career rejuvenator, Ole Tarantula. Recorded with the same psychedelic-folk all-stars — Peter Buck (R.E.M.), Scott McCaughey (Young Fresh Fellows, Minus 5) and Bill Rieflin (Ministry, R.E.M.) — Goodnight Oslo nevertheless works a very different tone; where Tarantula seemed an ecstatic affirmation of life and the natural world, Oslo wallows in ambiguity, telling unsettling stories about mistaken paths and the uncontrollable recesses of the psyche. "What You Is" absolves sinners of even their most egregious sins, slinking along on a horn-accented Memphis beat. "Saturday Groovers" finds a batch of aging '60s garage-pop fanatics refusing to act their age despite afflictions of "emphysema, heart disease and gout." "Hurry for the Sky" measures the perils of overachievement against an incongruous spaghetti-western backdrop. Oslo is brilliantly crafted and played, but by the end you'll be ready to gobble a fistful of uppers.
