Robyn Hitchcock - The Perfumed Corpse - Non-Album Tracks (1982-1983)

This is the other companion album for Robyn Hitchcock's "Groovy Decay" / "Gravy Deco" era.

That album was recorded in 1981, though it wasn't released until 1982. As I mentioned in my previous post, it suffered from production problems that's made it kind of the "black sheep" of all of his solo albums. But also, he seems to have hit a rough patch when it came to songwriting. One can see this by the fact that he usually had a plethora of songs to choose from with each album, usually enough for me to create an entire alternate album from the stray tracks. But in this case, there are only three known outtakes from the "Groovy Decay" recording sessions. (The first two tracks here come from that. The third, "Falling Leaves," I didn't deem good enough for inclusion.)

That should have left me with not nearly enough stray tracks to make an album. Hitchcock then went into a kind of semi-retirement for the next two years, performing virtually no concerts and releasing no new material. He has since said he flirted with giving up his musical career entirely at that point. However, he didn't actually stop recording  So the vast majority of this album actually dates from after "Groovy Decay," during these two supposed "lost years" before he put out the acclaimed "I Often Dream of Trains" in 1984 and restarted his solo career.

These lost years remain fairly musically mysterious since no bootlegs from his few concerts (a handful in the first half of 1982) survive, and no bootlegs of his studio material from the time have come to light. Thus, all of the remaining songs on this album come from his two rarities collections of the era, "You and Oblivion" and "Invisible Hitchcock." The liner notes for those albums don't say much, so I had to do some serious Googling to figure out which songs were recorded in which year.

I think one ends up with a pretty interesting album that Hitchcock could have easily released in 1983.

By the way, the title "The Perfumed Corpse" has nothing to do with any of the songs that I can see. But I used it because it was another working title for what became "Black Snake Diamond Role" (along with "Zinc Pear"). I used it here because I figured it was an actual album title that Hitchcock thought of using (that didn't seem to have any direct link to any of those songs either), so it would be better than me coming up with something from scratch.

01 It Was the Night (Robyn Hitchcock)
02 How Do You Work This Thing (Robyn Hitchcock)
03 Listening to the Higsons (Robyn Hitchcock)
04 Stranded in the Future (Robyn Hitchcock)
05 Aether [Demo] (Robyn Hitchcock)
06 Nothing (Robyn Hitchcock)
07 Eaten by Her Own Dinner (Robyn Hitchcock)
08 Dr. Sticky (Robyn Hitchcock)
09 Keeping Still (Robyn Hitchcock)
10 Mr. Deadly (Robyn Hitchcock)
11 Messages of Dark (Robyn Hitchcock)
12 Trash (Robyn Hitchcock)
13 Let There Be More Darkness (Robyn Hitchcock)
14 The Abandoned Brain (Robyn Hitchcock)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15122099/RobynH_1983_ThePerfumedCrpse_atse.zip.html

For the cover art, I used the cover for the 1984 single "My Wife and My Dead Wife." All I did was change the text at the bottom. It's a nice coincidence that Hitchcock has his eyes closed as if he's passed away and the title is "The Perfumed Corpse."