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Robyn Hitchcock & The Venus 3 : Goodnight Oslo - Yep Roc / Outside

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Robyn Hitchcock & The Venus 3 : Goodnight Oslo - Yep Roc / Outside

It might be the most under-the-wire career rebirth that the bloated music biz has seen of late, but Robyn Hitchcock has hit us between the eyes with some stellar stuff in recent years. After a couple of nice albums and reissues of classic work, his new album with his recent backing unit is a masterpiece.

A whimsical singer/songwriter who can be both twisted and tender, sometimes within the same song, Hitchcock has never really received his fair measure of fame, either in his native England or here in North America.

He has been prolific, fronting The Soft Boys from 1976 until 1981 and various bands since that time. Short of his heyday with The Egyptians in the 80s, he has never has a more sympathetic or useful group of collaborators as The Venus 3.

Part of the charm of The Venus 3 for North American listeners is that they are, for all intents and purposes, 60 per cent of REM - charter guitarist Peter Buck, long-time collaborator Scott McCaughey on bass and backing vocals, and post Bill Berry drummer Bill Riefen.

Indeed, they are a lovely backing band, and the guitar work of Buck and the impeccable harmonies of McCaughey are especially key, but what really makes this album work is the unique craft of the man sometimes known as England's Dylan. He delivers his wry wisdom in tracks like the R&B hooked riff of an album opener What You Is ("It doesn't matter what you was, it what you is, and what you is is what you are.") That Dylanesque track has a sonic and stylistic cousin in the upbeat, countryesque two-step Hurry For The Sky, which is a series of couplet truisms.

Meanwhile, Hitchcock channels a Leonard Cohen-like vamp in the minor chord, mid-tempo shuffle Your Head Here, all the while imparting the dry truth of the line, "I walk a thousand miles to be alone."

Like the work of many great songwriters, the craft of Hitchcock can be appreciated on several levels. Saturday Groovers could be taken as an ode to people who enjoy the good times in a retro way, what with its boppy 60s Brit pop feel, but then one realizes that the singer is laughing up his sleeve at never-grown-up folk who meanwhile deal with heart disease and gout.

There are moments when Hitchcock conjures up images of the 70s/80s Brit psychedelia of which he was a focal point back in the day, and they dominate the latter half of the album. Glued with Buck's jangling guitar, 16 Years is a slow swirling look back at those days, while TLC seems like a love song which lopes along before the cat is out of the bag when he sings the chorus line "Triptisol, Librium, Carbatrol".

The album closing title track Goodnight Oslo is cut from the same cloth, hearkening back to an event in that Norway city back in the mid 80s with the Egyptians, and Hitchcock even brings along former Egyptians member Morris Windsor for some cameo backing vocals.

There are other nice sonic touches. McCaughey certainly quarterbacks the backing vocals which help give a smooth professional edge to most tracks in counterpoint with Hitchcock's never textbook vocal signature, and he is joined in that role at times by a team that includes Windsor, The Decemberists' Colin Meloy, and Harvey Danger's Sean Nelson. There are touches like lap steel on Hurry For The Sky, harmonica on 16 Years, horns on What You Is, and violin, bongos, oud, trumpet, and santoor on the hambone-beat oom-pah frolic Up To Our Nex.

At this stage of his career, Robyn Hitchcock can really do whatever he wants. It is our good fortune that what he wants to deliver is a mature synthesis of his unique and evolving gifts.