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I Often Dream of Trains

Certain Songs #1955: Robyn Hitchcock – “I Often Dream of Trains”

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Album: I Often Dream of Trains
Year: 1984

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Framed by an interlocking pair of ghostly electric guitars, the title track of I Often Dream of Trains is a weird will o’ the wisp of a song, so understated in its presentation that you don’t even realize how funny it is.

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Certain Songs #1954: Robyn Hitchcock – “Autumn is Your Last Chance”

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Album: I Often Dream of Trains
Year: 1984

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“Autumn Is Your Last Chance” just might be my favorite Robyn Hitchcock song.

One of the things I love about Robyn Hitchcock is that he’s written some of the most beautiful songs I’ve ever heard: things like “Airscape,” “Madonna of The Wasps,” “I Am Not Me” and “Raymond and The Wires” are just lovely. That said, I’m going to have to go with “Autumn is Your Last Chance” as The Prettiest Song Ever Recorded, Robyn Hitchcock Division.

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Certain Songs #1953: Robyn Hitchcock – “Sounds Great When You’re Dead”

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Album: I Often Dream of Trains
Year: 1984

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Of course, just because I Often Dream of Trains was recorded as a drumless album doesn’t mean that the arrangements totally reflected that. After all, up to that point, Robyn Hitchcock had always written music for a band to play behind him, and so there were several songs on the album where you could hear how a band could flesh them out.

That was part of the fun, actually: hearing in your head how some of the songs could have sounded with a band. (And, in fact, Robyn opened his first live album with an absolute killer arrangement of “Sometimes I Wish I Was A Pretty Girl” that we’ll get to in a few days.)

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Certain Songs #1952: Robyn Hitchcock – “Uncorrected Personality Traits”

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Album: I Often Dream of Trains
Year: 1984

After his fine solo debut album, Robyn Hitchcock went straight back into the studio and made one of the worst records of his career, 1982’s Groovy Decay, which had a couple of decent songs, but that’s pretty much it. Which sucks, because that’s a great album title. And in fact, he had such a terrible time recording it, he quit the music biz for a couple of years.

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