- Perspex Island
Infobox Album
Name = Perspex Island
Type = studio
Artist = Robyn Hitchcock and the Egyptians
Released = 1991
Recorded =
Genre =Alternative rock
Length =
Label = Go! Discs
Producer =
Reviews =
Last album =
This album =
Next album ="Perspex Island" is the title of an album by
Robyn Hitchcock and the Egyptians, released on Go! Discs in 1991.The group's third under contract to A&M, it contains eleven Hitchcock originals which for him, are unusually uniform in style and production. It was recorded in Los Angeles in 1991, and features guest appearances by Hitchcock fans
Michael Stipe andPeter Buck of REM.The eleven songs tend to be dominated by Hitchock's own electric guitar playing, "So You Think You're in Love" selected as the main spin-off single ahead of the similarly commercial "Birds in Perspex" and "Oceanside". "So You Think You're in Love" was #1 on several Alternative charts. [Citation
last = Lanham
first = Tom
title = Robyn's Stark Fantasy World
newspaper = San Francisco Chronicle
year = 1988
date = 1998-02-07
url = http://fucktheusa.info/archive/91/092291.html ]In all, the set is one of Hitchcock's least challenging, his complex lyrical quirks held at bay by a production ethic which boosts the instrumentation. Nonetheless there are interesting themes in some of the texts, the lead track "Oceanside" revisiting ground previously trodden in "Airscape" from "Element of Light".
Pitched at the US student circuit, the album is a reasonable stab at early 1990s pop, and carries a Hitchcock oil painting on its front cover, depicting the mythological figure Thoth, which The Egyptians had once used as a group logo.
Use of American phrases such as 'Toll-free number' (in "Vegetation and Dimes") plus the fact that A&M refused to release his previous album in Britain, reveal the marketing strategy for Hitchcock at the time. On other tracks, his quintessentially English perspective nonetheless reveals itself, such as in "Ride" where he speaks of sitting in a railway carriage in Swindon, a large town close to Reading, as featured in "I Often Dream of Trains" (1984).
Track listing
#"Oceanside"
#"So You Think You're in Love"
#"Birds in Perspex"
#"Ultra Unbelievable Love"
#"Vegetation and Dimes"
#"Lysander"
#"Child of the Universe"
#"She Doesn't Exist"
#"Ride"
#"If You Go Away"
#"Earthly Paradise"References
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