Robyn Hitchcock

Jewels for Sophia (Warner Bros.)
by Jamie Kiffel

Heat hums rummy-thick and dizzy in your head, running you romantic like a crazed beekeeper with a honey-rubbed woman. But this ideal angel can’t be stung – which is why we have Robyn Hitchcock‘s sometimes tribal-strumming, usually light acoustic guitar-pop jangle with gluey-absurd fantasy lyrics, longing to penetrate mythic misses who siren-call like she-gods salivating slugs. He kills her, loves her, loves being killed by her! One masterful mistress waters our crooner better than a tomato; another “I embraced in my coffin” and hasn’t been seen since; yet another will set up housekeeping “on the moon/ And we can sleep in lava tubes/ And bask in solar winds” where “lunar flares will do you nicely.” What woman could resist?

One unforgettable insectess is the stunning Antwoman “with the cactus and the succulent/ [who] measured your neck.” Butterflies flit through letterboxes and bracken; ghosts rush through dark princess nights, and “amalgamated saturated clams/ Dig Rex in tunnels with gerbils in your annex.” With its Brit-twang, these are mad, messy hallucinations come to life: like harmless toilets blooming finches, gurgling globes with garter belts, or fairies flecked with tiny hamburger homes. In the right frame of mind, the disturbing turns sweetly freeing. We also get a simmer of pop references like radio interference, including Gene Hackman, Michael Stipe, and Saturday Night Live. Lyrics junk and jumble up in a scrumptious, psychotic scrapple. If this smelled, it would be lady slipper, dissection preservative and Ho-Hos. It’s confusion so rich you want to butter your face and slide on your hair in it. It’s all about love, baby, love – in a puddle of wide-eyed, glue-lusting, wickedly whipped Englishman.