Mossy Liquor is the title of a vinyl LP released by Robyn Hitchcock in 1996. The album preceded the release of the Moss Elixir CD by a few weeks, and half of it was made up of demos or alternative versions of the Moss Elixir material.

Opening with a Swedish language rendition of “Alright, Yeah”, side one also features four all new tracks, including the instrumental “Shuffling over the Flagstones”, the casual “Cool Bug Rumble”, and two particularly strong songs in “Wide Open Star” and “Each of Her Silver Wands”, the latter remade several years later by a reunited Soft Boys line up.

The rest of the new material includes “As Lemons Chop” and the archaeological comedy “Trilobite”, rounded off with a previously unheard and untitled guitar instrumental acting as an extended coda to the demo version of “Heliotrope”.

In 1996 I saw Hitchcock play this album at the now lost 12 bar Club off Denmark Street with Homer/Departure Lounge with Tim Keegan as his backing band.

Like a lot of Hitchcock, the less “produced” and spontaneous his performance the better a lot of times and this curious LP I think has some great tracks and alternative demos. Moss Elixir itself was quite a fine album too as he was beginning to escape major labels and increasingly doing his own troubadour thing beholden to no fashion.

Notable here is that he’s already 43 years old but still dozens of albums and hundreds of songs still flying out of him. I was still in my 20’s :-O