In 1984, British singer/songwriter Robyn Hitchcock emerged from a self-imposed hiatus to record and release perhaps his finest solo record, I Often Dream of Trains, a strange hodgepodge of stripped-down, surrealist songs dreamlike in quality: haunting and obscure one moment and brash and vivid the next—paralytic while kinetic. While Trains, which Hitchcock refers to as “home really, the place I come from,” might have been out of place among mid-eighties rock—think Prince, Springsteen, and U2—the album has aged well, each song still feeding into that seductive, dreamlike vibe that makes listening to the record an experience…no skipping tracks allowed.

On Monday night, Hitchcock took to the cozy Hazlet Theater on Pittsburgh’s North Side to perform the majority of Trains for the couple hundred who had braved the city’s first real taste of winter. With the lights dimmed, a record player sitting on a piano began playing “Sometimes I Wish I Was a Pretty Girl,” the second song on Trains. Some time during the second verse, Hitchcock emerged wearing a button-down, black jacket and a matching top hat large enough to be worn down the rabbit hole by Carroll’s Mad Hatter. He then fiddled with the record player, speeding up and slowing down the track while lip-syncing along to his recorded voice from twenty-four years earlier. It served as an initiation of sorts for those in the audience unfamiliar with Hitchcock’s career. If you didn’t get that opening bit, you probably weren’t gonna get Robyn.

As you can probably already tell, Hitchcock is a character, and part of the show’s fun was listening to the charming, cockney misanthrope speak between songs on topics that ranged from Obama’s recent landslide victory to his own inability to boogie to his mother, who happens to be a salamander that sends him text messages. “I got a text message from my mother today,” said Hitchcock. “She’s still alive,” the silver-haired, fifty-five-year-old musician felt the need to add.

Although he opened the show on piano with “Nocturne,” the eerie instrumental prelude to Trains, Hitchcock didn’t restrict himself to the proper order of songs from the album. Nor did he remain entrenched at center stage playing frontman behind a guitar all night. Instead, Hitchcock spent the evening jumping between guitars and the piano while two musicians (“They’re from England!” proclaimed Hitchcock.) took turns accompanying him on piano, acoustic guitar, trumpet, and saxophone.

The strongest tracks from Trains were equally impressive live. “Flavour of Night” and “Cathedral” were hauntingly beautiful and delicate, while “Sounds Great When You’re Dead” and “My Favorite Buildings” were Hitchcock guitar-pop at its best, perfectly offbeat. Other songs from Trains benefited from the live performance. “I Used To Say I Love You” and “Ye Sleeping Knights of Jesus” never seemed as melodic and humorous as they did this night, a combination that is Hitchcock’s bread and butter as a songwriter. Still, there was some mystery about the night, even though we more or less knew what we would be hearing. Trains is a varied album with all sorts of quirks, and I was curious to see how some songs would be performed, if done at all. Would “Uncorrected Personality Traits,” a hilarious PSA performed a capella, get the live treatment? The answer came as Hitchcock and the two others stepped to the microphone together without instruments. “Girls from the waist up,” sang Hitchcock in a high pitch. “Men from the waist down,” growled the other two. “Even Marilyn Monroe was a man/But this tends to get overlooked/By our mother-fixated/Overweight, sexist media,” sang the three in harmony.

The set ended fittingly with Hitchcock singing the album’s title track. A few minutes later, he returned to a standing ovation. “Sit down,” he said. “Stop standing around like you’re about to get measured.” He played an encore that drew from the more popular eras of his catalog, including personal favorites “Queen Elvis” and the more recent “Ole! Tarantula,” which he recorded with the Venus 3. The encore was phenomenal in its own right, but the night truly belonged to the songs off I Often Dream of Trains.

It was a full evening: show, shtick, and silliness. But the real pleasure came from hearing Hitchcock’s songs step off that record for an evening and come to life on the stage. He’s a strange fellow and a gifted performer, but hearing that perfect combination of offbeat lyric and rich melody reminds you that Hitchcock’s real genius is as a songwriter.

Hitchcock once said that playing his older songs was a way for him to revisit different moments in his life. Well, a few brave Pittsburghers thoroughly enjoyed revisiting 1984 with Robyn and would gladly accompany him to other points in history if he were to come back.

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“I Often Dream of Trains”

Categories: Concert Reviews
Tags: Robyn Hitchcock