{"id":7665,"date":"2026-06-05T14:27:17","date_gmt":"2026-06-05T13:27:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/shindig-magazine.com\/?p=7665"},"modified":"2026-06-05T14:27:17","modified_gmt":"2026-06-05T13:27:17","slug":"shindig-issue-176-robyn-hitchcock","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shindig-magazine.com\/?p=7665","title":{"rendered":"Shindig! Issue #176 \u2013 Robyn Hitchcock"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nearly 50 years into a career that started with out of time psych noiseniks The Soft Boys in 1977 and has continued to defy categorisation across countless projects since, ROBYN HITCHCOCK is back with his 25th solo album The Confuser. <\/em>The enduring psychedelic troubadour talks to BEN GRAHAM from his home in Nashville about his new record, his storied past, and how songs behave like cats but have to be caught like fishes<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Rew, Seligman and Windsor all played on Hitchcock\u2019s 1981 solo debut Black Snake Diamond Role, <\/em>which featured signature songs like \u2018Brenda\u2019s Iron Sledge\u2019 (inspired by the rise of Thatcherism), \u2018Acid Bird\u2019 and \u2018The Man Who Invented Himself\u2019. Although it may have sounded like a natural continuation of The Soft Boys, Hitchcock was keen to work in a more fluid way rather than writing for a band or for other people\u2019s preconceptions of what he should sound like.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just took elements that I liked from music and wanted to write my versions of good songs,\u201d he says now of the psychedelic thread that runs like a wild mercury seam through his work. \u201cThey\u2019re not to do with LSD or consciousness expansion in the way that music was in \u201966 or \u201967. The world\u2019s changed and I had those sensibilities musically, but I was never gonna go, \u2018Peace and love, man\u2019 or \u2018Look at the dragons in the clouds.\u2019 I wasn\u2019t that deluded to think that the world was anything like it had been 10 or 20 years earlier. So I just equipped myself with certain totems of psychedelia like backwards guitar or double-tracked harmonies with a bit of phasing, the occasional use of electric sitar. But that was too subtle, too nuanced. It would\u2019ve been easier to market us if I\u2019d gone, \u2018Yes, we are psychedelic, here we go boys, you\u2019ve gotta wear some beads, the punks are gonna hate it but, you know, it worked for The Jam, looking mod\u2026\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n