Album: Moss Elixir
Year: 1996
. . .
My favorite song from Moss Elixir was something that sounded like no Robyn Hitchcock song previously done — always a good sign 15+ years into a career — and yet fit squarely into his catalog. I guess just for the title alone: “I Am Not Me” is a pretty Hitchcockian song title.
“I Am Not Me” opened with an off-kilter crunchy guitar that continually cried out for a rhythm section that had clearly missed the bus, and so it smashed against itself like the ocean against a jagged cliff.
When you take me
Into the field of glass and rain and then
You get me looking again
I say, “Caroline
No need to spell it backwards
That’s ‘eniloraC’.”
You say, “I’m not so sure
I am not me.”
“I Am Not Me” is one of several songs on Moss Elixir that feature the violin of Deni Bonet, which added an incredible amount of tension to the verses of “I Am Not Me,” which was only temporarily resolved by the chorus.
So sha-la-la-la me
Oh, sha-la la-la me
An obvious homage to potential future Certain Song “Sha-la-la-la-lee” by the Small Faces, that short and sweet chorus is incredibly striking, coming out of nowhere to calm the roiling waters kicked up by the rest of the song, if only for a short period of time.
I especially love the last chorus, where the bass guitar that you’ve been missing the entire time, sneaks in almost like a sigh underneath the overdubbed Robyns, after which he takes a long, distorted solo, accompanied only by that bass, Bonet’s violin and a tambourine.
It’s weird and off-kilter, and yet in its own way, quite gorgeous, the definite centerpiece of one of the man’s greatest records.
“I Am Not Me”
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