Robyn Hitchcock and The Egyptians
Fegmania!

"My wife is sitting there, and I'm making coffee for two...

...but I come back inside bringing coffee for three.

COFFEE FOR THREE...???"

The third wheel, which in the end is not so much of a wheel. That is: Robyn Hitchcock's dead wife. She's there too, even if no one can see her (except him). She's also in the house, even if no one can hear her speak (except him). Because she speaks, yes, she may be a ghost but oh how she speaks, and she even says to him: "Robyn, YOU KNOW I don't take sugar...". It's the most surreal and grotesque of situations, or at least it would be for anyone, but our protagonist doesn't seem to be too ruffled... Only one doubt arises in the end: "I can't decide which of the two things I love more: warm flesh and blood... or the pale smile of a ghost?". A beautiful dilemma.

The Hitchcock of "fegMANIA!" is a constant and delicate balance between reality and vision, lucid storytelling of dreams and total abandonment to delirium, fairy tales and nightmares. Rediscovering pieces like "My Wife & My Dead Wife" is much more than mere listening; it is rather opening a forgotten chest in the attic amidst cobwebs and letting a magical world of fantastic creatures and neo-psychedelic impressions emerge: colorful dreams and macabre hallucinations, flowers and strawberries overlapping with appearances of insects and unsettling anthropomorphic beings, monsters of an abnormally and perpetually pregnant psyche. Perhaps it's needless to say that the Character in question is the truest and most direct heir of Syd Barrett who saw mysterious things in cats ("Lucifer Sam") or told stories of fairy tale gnomes named Grimble Gromble ("The Gnome")...? Perhaps yes, for those who have spent a FAIR amount of time on these notes. But it never hurts to repeat it, that's for sure...

The man who just a short time before "dreamed of trains" came to fill his dreams with fantasies not easy to describe, and to recount them in music and words with a perfection and Genius that place this Album at the absolute heights of the '80s - at least those that will NEVER be forgotten... The old rhythmic soul of the Soft Boys (Andy Metcalfe and Morris Windsor) was part of the team, in what is the first chapter of the Egyptians and especially the wonderful testament of what one can achieve by listening to the voice of the mind alone and transforming it into Art. Herein lies all of Hitchcock, all his musical upbringing, all his voracious imagination, all his SELF... 

...and speaking of musical background: try thinking about how much Roger McGuinn there is in "Another Bubble". So much that it couldn't be expressed in percentage. It's him, unmistakable, the "jingle-jangle" that never betrays and has made proselytes among generations of authors and musicians, and that in those same years the Paisley boys - not so differently - married with the beats of post-punk. And think about how much California (indeed) there is in "I'm Only You": from my point of view, especially in the second part (when the song turns into improvisation and everything flows into an ocean of visionary raga), I have always believed in the intoxicating mirage that it was nothing but the never-realized continuation of "The End", and that Robyn had resumed playing right where Robbie Krieger had left off. And the more years pass and the more I listen to it, the more I believe it...

...but when dealing with a Record that also includes "Egyptian Cream" one must be careful to talk about MIRAGES - and of that opening, I could never say whether I'm more struck by that guitar climbing toward crazy evolutions, or that lyrics (less crazy?) speaking of a woman at whose mere gesture thousands of FINGERS rise like plants from the desert sand. And the obsessive mantra of "Goodnight I Say," that bursts forth like an avalanche on a distorted vision in which Robyn swims at the bottom of the sea among voices calling him...? And the atmospheres of "Glass"...? How can one express it all better than the sounds already do?

Lewis Carroll would have been proud of this Record. Perhaps he would have chosen it as a source of inspiration. Because not even he had the IDEA (!) light up in his mind of a man with a lightbulb for a head ("The Man with the Lightbulb Head", another creation straight out of the Hitchcock laboratory). Speaking of ENTOMOLOGY, we highlight "Insect Mother" and the Masterpiece "The Fly" (never has the wing beat of a fly been more rattling and metallic than the indescribable guitar that represents it...). 

And when it comes to composing sublime Pop inventions, well, even then Robyn doesn't lack: "Strawberry Mind" with its keyboard and guitar, the perfect melody of "Heaven"... Do we need more confirmations?

...and when everything seems over (but records are never over until they REALLY are): a mad chaos of uncontrolled instruments. The balance is broken, chaos returns to reign supreme - waiting for new glimpses, new visions...