Say Ole! For Robyn Hitchcock & The Venus 3

Mod Club

Toronto, ON

on Nov 10 2006

Steve McLean (CHARTattack)

11/15/2006 4:30pm

I've seen Robyn Hitchcock half-a-dozen times and have a number of albums from his various incarnations over the past 30 years with The Soft Boys, The Egyptians and solo. But his new Ole! Tarantula album is one of the year's best, and Friday night's performance saw him at his peak.

The new album was recorded by the same people who took the stage, a band called The Venus 3, who are comprised of R.E.M. guitarist Peter Buck, R.E.M. drummer Bill Rieflin and honourary R.E.M. member, Young Fresh Fellows main man and The Minus 5 principal, Scott McCaughey. Buck moved around the stage playing chiming six- and 12-string guitars like he does with his more famous band. McCaughey doffed and donned a quasi-cowboy hat while playing bass and providing harmonies, while Rieflin kept a rock-steady beat at the back of the stage. The spotlight, however, was clearly on the often eccentric but always engaging Hitchcock, who sang, played guitar and wore the same polka-dot shirt that he had on when we chatted at a Yep Roc party in Austin, Texas last year.

The concert opened with the new LP's first track, the somewhat psychedelic "Adventure Rocket Ship," and set a high standard that didn't lapse through almost two hours of subsequent entertainment. Ole! Tarantula's title track followed two songs later, and the album was also well-represented by "The Authority Box," "(A Man's Gotta Know His Limitations) Briggs" and "N.Y. Doll," a composition inspired by the late New York Dolls bassist, Arthur "Killer" Kane.

A somewhat ominous and threatening reading of Bob Dylan's "Ballad Of A Thin Man" was dropped in fairly early in the set, but Hitchcock happily reached back into his own large catalogue for most of the show. It's a tribute to the talents of his part-time bandmates that they were able to keep up, as the set list careened from The Soft Boys' "Queen Of Eyes" and the classic, anger-fuelled "I Wanna Destroy You" to Egyptians tracks "Madonna Of The Wasps" and "Driving Aloud (Radio Storm)" to solo numbers "Sally Was A Legend," "Viva! Sea-Tac" and "Creeped Out."

But Hitchcock's introductions were often as entertaining as the songs themselves. He used his keen sense of humour to skewer the U.S. government and the war in Iraq and extol the thrill of watching the Dirty Harry film, Magnum Force. During one meandering rant that evolved from how the Pope regularly emails him to find out about achieving inner peace to how Hitchcock keeps his skin so smooth, he leaned down to where I was taking notes in the front row and asked if I was getting everything down. The band then launched into a stellar version of Globe Of Frogs' "Vibrating."

Buck and McCaughey switched instruments when they came out for an encore. At the request of show promoter Craig Laskey, McCaughey unleashed the Young Fresh Fellows' rollicking "Hillbilly Drummer Girl." Buck then got behind the drum kit, Rieflin picked up the bass and Hitchcock ditched the guitar to focus on an animated dance routine while singing the brilliant Egyptians pop track, "Listening To The Higsons."

That would have been a great way to end the show, but the crowd wouldn't settle for it, and its enthusiastic cheering brought the group back to the stage for one more song. It would have been tough to top their choice, an amped-up version of 1976's "Give It To The Soft Boys."

There was little of the more folk-influenced material that's dominated too much of Hitchcock's recent solo output, but lots of vibrant, jangly guitar. After the show, while his bandmates were signing autographs and posing for photos at the back of the club, the man responsible for much of that jangling walked up to me and held out his hand.

"Hi, I'm Peter," he said.

"No shit," I thought to myself, "I've been collecting R.E.M. records since I first saw you as an unknown act opening for The English Beat in 1983.

"Immensely talented artists with no egos. The music world could use more people like Robyn Hitchcock & The Venus 3.