Robyn's mossy rock no elixer for the Hitchcock Blues

Mossy Elixer

Spanning 14 albums, Hitchcock's career has alternated between ups of total brilliance and downs of creative bankruptcy. After a couple of albums as leader of the Soft Boys, including the unknown classic Underwater Moonlight, Hitchcock had quite a good run in the mid-'80s with striking records like Element of Light and I Often Dream of Trains, and quite a bad run at the turn of the decade with the dull commercialities of Perspex Island and Globe of Frogs. Yet even those albums contained a handful of near-perfect songs, and between them he found time for the macabre acoustic beauty of Eye, possibly his greatest achievement to date. He remains intermittently capable of spine-tingling genius. So why does the mediocre Moss Elixir make me so depressed?

Perhaps because there always seemed to be an excuse in the past. Groovy Decay suffered because he was drinking himself to death at the time. A good deal of Perspex Island was arena-ready garbage because producer Paul Fox turned fine material into INXS sound-alikes. Globe of Frogs was clearly the product of a burnout.

But Hitchcock was without a label for over two years, and had plenty of time to develop the material on Moss Elixir and its vinyl demo alter ego, Mossy Liquor. The production is spare and acoustic, giving the record the same intimacy that produced Eye and the similarly excellent I Often Dream of Trains. On the press sheet, Hitchcock even claims how much of a "real record" it is. If he thinks that this is the best he can do, that's enough to make me cry.

And although Deni Bonet's obnoxious violin-as-fiddle playing on half the tracks doesn't help matters, the songs aren't wrecked by their treatment; they just aren't very interesting. There is nothing on this album that is as chilling as Trains' "Flavour of Night," as soothing as Eye's "Glass Hotel," or as sublime as Fegmania's "Heaven." Nothing even comes close. Songs like "Heliotrope," and "You and Oblivion" all try to pull at the same heartstrings, but end up grating on them. The demos on Mossy Liquor are slightly more entertaining, but mostly just slight.

There are a few decent songs here: "I Am Not Me" is nicely threatening, and "Alright Yeah" has a neat guitar sound, if little else. But there is an alienating detachment that makes the whole album seem emotionally muted. More than ever before, feeling is replaced with a self-satisfied eccentricity. Still, nothing here is as awful as his horrific K-single last year, "I Something You," and I have faith he can escape from Moss Elixir's contented torpor and regain his passion. After all, didn't Lou Reed claim Metal Machine Music was the best thing he had ever done?

Warner is giving the album a huge push, and I fear that people will hear it and think of Hitchcock as just another tuneless bore. That's why I've mentioned his other albums and songs so much: those albums truly highlight Hitchcock's wonderful but erratic talent. There may be a big "Drink me" label on Moss Elixir, but this spirit is weak.

--David Auerbach