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Robyn Hitchcock's Live Trains on CD/DVD

6:57 p.m. · October 1, 2009 · by Jim Allen

It won't come as news to anyone that the last couple of years have brought a bounty of revered alt-rockers performing full-album shows where they revisit one of their classic albums in its entirety. In fact, the phrase "in its entirety" has probably gotten more use lately than at any other point in its history thanks to that very phenomenon. It was around this time last year that king of quirk Robyn Hitchcock took advantage of the zeitgeist and presented a live show based around his cult-classic 1984 album I Often Dream of Trains, a beautifully spooky, undeniably autumnal. largely acoustic effort that was recorded mostly solo and realized onstage with help from a couple of talented pals.

Now, thanks to the efforts of Yep Roc, the rest of the world can enjoy what a lucky few got to experience in 2008 when Hitch rode his Trains at New York's Symphony Space. Set for November 10 is the release of a live DVD/CD package documenting that moment in Hitchcock history. But that's not all -- the eternally eccentric Hitchcock is also allegedly planning on a deluxe phenakistoscope version. No, we didn't just make that word up, but we're not about to start explaining it either. If we had Hitchcock's home number, we'd offer to let him sort it out for you, but short of that, educate yourself on the arcane artform here and extrapolate from there.