Robyn Hitchcock 32: The Man Downstairs

Like every other musician, Robyn Hitchcock went into quarantine, lockdown, sheltering in place, whatever you want to call it, as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. In his case, he hunkered down in Nashville with his partner Emma Swift, shared the occasional file and short story via his Patreon account, and performed regular, almost weekly acoustic shows from his kitchen on Zoom. While Emma completed an album of unique Dylan covers, Robyn’s only release was this odd snapshot from his vault.

The Man Downstairs is helpfully subtitled Demos & Rarities, and purports to be a dry run for The Man Upstairs. That album was split between evenly between covers and originals, and while his own songs tip the scales on this one, only “Recalling The Truth” made it to the final product; “I Pray When I’m Drunk” was rerecorded with a full band for the album what came after.

The cover choices shouldn’t surprise many Robyn fans—“Arnold Layne” being one of the more common Syd Barrett selections, Dylan’s “Born In Time”, and Nick Drake’s “River Man”, which he’d played onstage. “The Tower Song” by Townes Van Zandt is a surprise, and hopefully will send the uninitiated to that catalog. His own songs run the gamut of his styles, from the mildly Dylanesque “All Love And No Peace” and the mild psychedelia of “The Threat Of Freedom” to the retro (for him) approach of the disparate “Cavendish Square” and “On Seeing Your Photograph”.

An unnumbered release on his own label, the homemade charm of The Man Downstairs comes through in its minimalist packaging, topped by a truly amateurish cover collage. Yet the quality of the music puts this up there with previous solo acoustic endeavors. What’s more, the quality of the recording suggests that he should stick with this presentation going forward, if only for economic reasons.

Robyn Hitchcock The Man Downstairs: Demos & Rarities (2020)—3