Robyn Hitchcock Returns With 'I Am This Thing'
(BHM) Legendary British singer-songwriter Robyn Hitchcock returns with his new single, "I Am This Thing," available now via Tiny Ghost Records. An official music video premieres on YouTube. "I Am This Thing" heralds the eagerly awaited arrival of Hitchcock's 25th solo studio album and first collection of all-new original songs in close to four years, The Confuser, arriving everywhere on Friday, July 24.
In his sixth decade as an artist, Robyn Hitchcock manages to still illuminate and mystify, bemuse and philosophize, unlike any other before or since. The ebulliently self-anthemic "I Am This Thing" sees him asserting his very being while pondering the meaning of life itself: why are we here, how long are we here for, and what was the point anyway?
"If you go back through my songs, one of the things that I've always written about is the shock of existence," says Robyn Hitchcock. "Oh God, I'm here. Oh wow, I'm encased in me. It's a sort of existential flash - it could be a flash of joy or a flash of revulsion or a flash of horror, but, oh God, I am actually this thing. And eventually I won't be. My lease is temporary. My visa will expire. My lease will run out. My spirit will move on, the energy that comprises me will flee into the ether and become part of a pile of leaves somewhere in Delaware. Who knows where the soul goes? You can see the life going out of somebody when they pass on, but where it goes, nobody knows. But while you're in it, you're in it. So this song is just a celebration of that."
Recorded at studios in Hitchcock's longtime home base of Nashville USA by Brad Jones (Josh Rouse, Chuck Prophet, Jill Sobule) and Jordan Lehning (Kacey Musgraves, Rodney Crowell, Emma Swift), The Confuser features crack accompaniment from Music City session experts including electric guitarist Jeremy Fetzer (Steelism, Lambchop, Kesha), bass guitarist Todd Bolden, and drummer/percussionist Eric Slick (Dr. Dog, Adrian Belew, Taylor Swift). Special guests include cherished friends Gillian Welch (contributing vocals to "Ghost in Sunlight") and Kimberley Rew (co-founder, with Hitchcock, of The Soft Boys), who lends additional guitar to "Breathless," "How To Feel Alright," "Ghost in Sunlight," and "Growing From The Ruins." The energetically head-on backing propels a dazzlingly dynamic collection of typically perceptive new songs that traverse familiar signposts near and dear to Hitchcock's creative heart - the significance of love, the mysteries of the cosmos, and all the abstract accidents that happen between the luck of birth and the bitter end. From the characteristically skewed "My Dead Astronaut" to the jaunty music hall psychedelia of the album-closing "Wasted," The Confuser manifests all the accrued wisdom and hard-earned knowledge of a veteran songwriter, presented with the vivacious gusto and driven delight of an artist still with something to prove. As ever, Hitchcock proudly carries the flame for a particular brand of traditional singer-songcraft, a deeply personal penchant sparked by his Summer of Love adolescence (detailed in his acclaimed first memoir, 1967: How I Got There and Why I Never Left) and furthered throughout the myriad cultural metamorphoses that followed. With The Confuser, Robyn Hitchcock upholds the enduring value of those halcyon influences, while managing once again to imbue it all with his singular wit and keenness of vision.
"One of my roles has been to keep a certain kind of music alive," says Hitchcock. "I didn't invent this field of music, but I've perpetuated it. Arguably, the Soft Boys did that, amongst other things. It wasn't peace and love or 'oh wow, man, look at these trippy flowers,' it wasn't any of that. It was simply a certain kind of sound and a certain kind of feeling that was in those records made between 1965 and 1968, which are now seen as the Big Bang of classic rock, or whatever you want to call it. I've just kept that approach to music alive - verse, chorus, middle eight, harmonies, guitar solos, and free-range lyrics. I'm very lucky to be able to do this. I can't believe I'm still allowed to do it. But nobody's stopped me, and I'm kind of touching wood that I can carry on doing it a bit longer."
The seemingly indefatigable Hitchcock will introduce fans to The Confuser - along with classic songs from across his illustrious body of work thus far - on a busy international tour schedule that includes both solo performances and full-band shows in North America, the United Kingdom, and Europe through October.
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