Robyn Hitchcock - Mossy Liquor - Alternate Version (1996)

In the early 1990s, Robyn Hitchcock's father died. That put Robyn in a funk that resulted in him not recording much for all of 1994 and 1995. But he came back in 1996 with the acoustic album "Moss Elixir."

This album is not that one. Note the album title is similar but not the same. Within weeks of "Moss Elixir" getting released, he released "Mossy Liquor." It contains a bunch of songs that didn't make the other album, as well as some demos and alternate versions.

This isn't quite that album either, because I made some significant changes. For starters, I got rid of all of the demos and alternate versions. (There actually is a version of one of the songs sung in Swedish, which seems pointless to me unless you speak Swedish.) I replaced those with some other songs from the same year that happen to be acoustic too, and come from the same year. Plus, all but one of them are studio recordings. It's a lucky break how well these other songs fit in.

The result, in my opinion, is an album that's much stronger than the official version. And while it's not quite as good as "Moss Elixir," I think it's close.

By the way, one song here is kind of odd in that it may not be an actual song at all. One of the songs I removed is a demo version of "Heliotrope." It comes to an end and then after a long gap there's a minute and a half long instrumental. The Wikipedia page on "Mossy Liquor" considers this a separate unnamed song. I've included it and chosen the name "Heliotrope Coda," since it may well be a musical variant from "Heliotrope."

"I Stayed Too Long" was newly uncovered in a bootleg that has just come to light and was posted at this blog for the first time anywhere. It seems like a fully formed song, but perhaps it was only played once in concert, or a few times at most.

01 Shuffling Over the Flagstones [Instrumental] (Robyn Hitchcock)
02 Cool Bug Rumble (Robyn Hitchcock)
03 Wide Open Star (Robyn Hitchcock)
04 Each of Her Silver Wands (Robyn Hitchcock)
05 As Lemons Chop (Robyn Hitchcock)
06 Trilobite (Robyn Hitchcock)
07 Caroline Says II [Demo] (Robyn Hitchcock)
08 Creatures of Light [Demo] (Robyn Hitchcock)
09 Dr. Lucy [Demo] (Robyn Hitchcock)
10 The Feelers Was Everywhere (Robyn Hitchcock)
11 I Stayed Too Long (Robyn Hitchcock)
12 Heliotrope Coda [Instrumental] (Robyn Hitchcock)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15122242/RobynH_1996_MossyLiqAlternate_atse.zip.html

The album cover is the exact official cover. There's no text whatsoever on the official version, so I've kept it that way.