HITCHCOCK: FINE LINE

The Variety Arts Center was an appropriate setting for Robyn Hitchcock & the Egyptians’ concert Friday. As a songwriter and performer, Hitchcock works on so many different levels at once that he’s something of a variety show in himself.

Hitchcock walks with remarkable grace a fine line between head-in-the-clouds surrealism and sharp, feet-on-the-ground emotional clarity. His bizarre imagery and observations are grafted to enticingly rocking and hook-filled music. Furrowing his heavy eyebrows and staring intensely and uneasily over the heads of the crowd, the Englishman managed to seem both perfectly sane and absolutely bonkers at once--especially in his apparently extemporaneous yet minutely detailed (and often hilarious) song introductions.

Massachusetts-based Salem 66, recently reduced to an all-female trio, preceded Hitchcock with a brief set of upbeat, somewhat plain material.