Eye (album)

Infobox Album
Name = Eye
Type = studio
Longtype =
Artist = Robyn Hitchcock


Cover size =
Caption =
Released = March 12, 1990
Recorded =
Genre = Rock
Length = 63:57
Language =
Label = Twin/Tone Records
Producer =
Reviews =
*Allmusic Rating|4.5|5 [http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:aifuxq85ldke link]
Compiled by =
Chronology =
Last album = "Queen Elvis"
(1989)
This album = "Eye"
(1990)
Next album = Perspex Island
(1991)
Misc =

"Eye" is an album released by Robyn Hitchcock on Twin/Tone Records in 1990 and is his fourth entirely solo album. It was recorded acoustically in the style of "I Often Dream Of Trains" (1984) with which it shares the green/ gold sleeve design and could therefore be seen as a sequel piece. (This solo effort interrupted a series of releases by Robyn Hitchcock & The Egytians for A&M.)

"Eye" is entirely self-composed and ran to fourteen songs (vinyl) and eighteen (CD), the difference consisting of tracks 8, 9, 10 and 18.

As an overall work, "Eye" shows Robyn Hitchcock at his most fertile. It also displays his dexterity as an acoustic guitarist, his novel finger picking on tracks such as "Raining Twilight Coast" (written during a downpour in East Sussex) incorporating wide ranging fret-work and softly rendered hammer-on/ pull-off techniques.

From a compositional point of view, several of the titles are unorthodox, the piano-tinkling "Certainly Clickot" consisting of a series of semi-hallucinatory scenes and absurdities, and "Agony Of Pleasure" incorporating a high concentration of key changes such that each successive chord change could conceivably proceed in almost any direction.

The album's most celebrated track, "Queen Elvis", arrived in the wake of an album of the same name (on which it was not included), and deals obliquely with its subject matter via suggestions of transvestitism and references to scientific phenomena such as curved space and infinite reflections of light.

Elsewhere Hitchcock's surrealist trend surfaces, for example in the dream-like "Aquarium" in which fish are likened to aeroplanes, flying through the 'trees' of their sub-aquatic world whilst the onlooker stands in a daydream-like state contemplating a lost love.

The track "Glass Hotel" is one of his more delicate works, and connects to his miniature story published as a sleeve note, which tells the tale of a glass structure located near Ventnor on the Isle of Wight, frequented by eccentric aristocrats, and which was the scene of several surreal events before crumbling into the sea. (Hitchcock's sense of absurdity can also be glimpsed in the irrelevant statement on the back of the sleeve, that "Kung Fu Fighting" was originally released in 1974.)

The up-tempo "Beautiful Girl" is one of the albums most straight-forward compositions and was lifted for a UK single, the video of which was broadcast on national television. The full track listing also contains two instrumentals in the guitar-based "Chinese Water Python" and the piano piece, "College Of Ice".

Performance-wise, "Eye" is definitive, all Hitchcock's own work and featuring some of his most accomplished acoustic guitar (eg the intensely executed "Glass Hotel"), and multi-tracked backing vocals (eg the poised falsetto in "Cynthia Mask")

"Eye" was reissued in 1995 by Rhino and added the tracks "Raining Twilight Coast (demo)", "Agony of Pleasure (demo)", and "Queen Elvis (demo)".

Track listing

All songs written by Robyn Hitchcock

# "Cynthia Mask" — 4:35
# "Certainly Clickot" — 2:14
# "Queen Elvis" — 4:22
# "Flesh Cartoons" — 4:22
# "Chinese Water Python" — 2:12
# "Executioner" — 3:43
# "Linctus House" — 5:12
# "Sweet Ghost of Light" — 3:07
# "College of Ice" — 3:41
# "Transparent Lover" — 3:35
# "Beautiful Girl" — 2:12
# "Raining Twilight Coast" — 4:38
# "Clean Steve" — 3:51
# "Agony of Pleasure" — 2:23
# "Glass Hotel" — 3:26
# "Satellite" — 1:43
# "Aquarium" — 4:19
# "Queen Elvis II" — 4:22

External links

* [http://www.twintone.com/projects/89175.html Twin/Tone Records album page]