The swan song of the Egyptians is their most atypical album and the only one, along with Fegmania!, to preserve a precise identity as a whole: Hitchcock writes songs that are not easily accessible and allows them to be drowned in electronic arrangements reminiscent of the more intellectual Magnetic Fields (The Yip Song at the opening is the most overflowing example).
His serious authorial ambitions reach their peak with The Wreck of the Arthur Lee and Serpent at the Gates of Wisdom.
The only common ground with the easy listening radio hits of the more recent past is Arms of Love, yet subtly frightening; When I Was Dead resurrects certain ballads from the Soft Boys (with limited success, but drowned in a torrential synthetic bagpipe), Driving Aloud has the intensity of the best Brian Wilson.
Complex and multifaceted, not the best but almost.
Tracklist
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