If you’ve seen The Lego Movie, the phrase “The Man Upstairs” has some ominous overtones; to everyone else, it’s just a euphemism for God. It’s not clear which connotation Robyn Hitchcock might have been shooting for when he titled his new album The Man Upstairs—after all, he’s no stranger to either religion or animation—but it’s likely there’s no overarching theme at play here. The veteran post-punk folksinger has assembled 10 songs, half of them covers, that don’t seem to mesh in any way other than the fact Hitchcock is singing them.
The first time I saw Hitchcock live was in 1996, when he was splitting a solo acoustic tour with Billy Bragg. Hitchcock’s set was striking, and not just because of the flagrant contrast he and Bragg were gleefully milking: one the whimsical troubadour, the other the craggy firebrand. The two, of course, have more in common than that reductive binary would have you believe, but Hitchcock stood out in one clear, shining way: He’s not just a storyteller, but a shaggy-dog raconteur, as well as a chatty chap who’s more than happy to weave his songs (and those of others) in and out of lengthy tangents and stream-of-consciousness palavering.
In that sense, The Man Upstairs is much like a Hitchcock gig: it meanders, and it has a lovely time doing so. “Trouble in Your Blood” is a study in fragility, all feathery strumming and tentative cello. If it has a vaguely Nick Drake-esque aura, that’s because the album is produced by Joe Boyd, famous for his work on Five Leaves Left and Bryter Layter, as well as everyone from Pink Floyd to Fairport Convention. But Hitchcock’s voice is his own: nasal and astringent, the polar opposite of Drake’s, but no less melodic or emotive on tracks like “Comme Toujours”, which sports sharper, fingerpicked guitar beneath Hitchcock’s charmingly lopsided French. “I’m not trying to be clever,” he sings, and he makes it sound like the cleverest lyric ever uttered.
The album’s cover songs fare just as well. In Hitchcock’s hands, “To Turn You On”—one of the most starry-eyed tracks from Roxy Music’s Avalon—into a less languid, more quietly urgent plea. The Doors’ “The Crystal Ship” is the closest The Man Upstairs comes to psychedelia (in other words, not very), and for a singer-songwriter who once repurposed psychedelic music so cannily, it’s an unsatisfying glimpse into what the album might have sounded like with a lusher, fleshier approach—not to mention a more developed idea behind it.
Boyd’s production is subtle, soft, and breathy throughout The Man Upstairs, but for such a notable studio legend, he doesn’t bring much to the table besides that. His pairing with Hitchcock is a matchup that practically oozes masterpiece potential, only here it seems squandered on a set of songs that feel like breezy throwaways. The Man Upstairs’ best track is Hitchcock's version of the Psychedelic Furs’ “The Ghost in You” that manages to extract far more of a haunted atmosphere from the song than the band who wrote it, great as they are, ever did.
Then again, Hitchcock has a thing for ghosts, and it’s indicative of his knack for interpreting other artists, and storytelling in general, that he’s able to funnel his own obsessions through songs he didn’t compose. Here, though, it's simply not enough. Hitchcock has stated that he loves The Man Upstairs because it’s not “just another singer-songwriter laying their freshest eggs,” but with Boyd at the controls—and Hitchcock at the mic—that’s exactly what this album could and maybe should have been. The Man Upstairs has warmth and charm galore, but it needs someone, anyone, reaching down to more strongly pull the strings.
