Robert Christgau: Dean of American Rock Critics

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Robyn Hitchcock

  • Jewels for Sophia [Warner Bros., 1999] Choice Cuts

Consumer Guide Reviews:

Jewels for Sophia [Warner Bros., 1999]
"Don't Talk to Me About Gene Hackman" Choice Cuts

Further Notes:

Subjects for Further Research [1980s]: Hitchcock is the kind of English eccentric who becomes impossible to bear when he's taken up by American Anglophiles. I admired the Soft Boys' 1980 Underwater Moonlight and Robyn's own 1981 Black Snake Diamond Role from a distance, but my enthusiasm dimmed as he and his Egyptians became college-radio idols, and once I noticed the one about the guy who keeps his wife's corpse around for company, his considerable talent meant nothing to me. I have no doubt that scattered among his albums are songs strong enough to withstand his professional-oddball attentions, and if I were more spiritually advanced I might even swallow my prejudices and learn to enjoy him for what he is. Which is what? A rock and roll cross between H.P. Lovecraft and Kingsley Amis? Way too kind, but that's as much thought as I intend to give the matter.