Album: Gotta Let This Hen Out!
Year: 1985
. . .
Last week, I pointed out that one of the charms of the songs on Robyn Hitchcock’s I Often Dream of Trains was that you could tell that he was still kind of writing some of them for a band, which is totally borne out by how easily “Sometimes I Wish I Was a Pretty Girl,” the opening track of his 1985 live album, the extraordinary Gotta Let This Hen Out!, translated to a full band.
“Sometimes I Wish I Was a Pretty Girl” opens with Hitchcock scratching weird scrubby chords from his guitar while drummer Morris Windsor plays behind the beat, as Hitchcock intones the Psycho-influenced chorus.
Sometimes I wish I was a pretty girl
So I could wreck myself in the shower
Sometimes I wish I was a pretty girl
So I could wreck myself in the shower
Of course, what you notice here is Hitchcock’s unhinged singing, inhabiting the guy in the song by swallowing “gurrrl” and shouting the last syllable of “sho-WERRRRR“. And then the Egyptians are off, Hitchcock’s guitar gleaming while Windsor double-times and Andy Metcalfe throws out hooks.
Been on my own so long
I can’t tell left from wrong
Bloody red bats squelching offal
Foaming mutilations in the kiss of death
And so it goes, back and forth, completely effortless, setting up just how his crack band was going to set up Robyn’s songs for the rest of the record. Kind of how the studio version “Sometimes I Wish I Was a Pretty Girl” — the first song with words on I Often Dream of Trains — sets up much of the rest of the album. They’re both amazing, and it’s possible that the only reason that I chose this one is that I heard it first.
“Sometimes I Wish I Was A Pretty Girl (London 04-27-1985)”
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