Luxor
Following an album with the reunitedSoft Boys, the humorously perverse but always melodic Robyn Hitchcock returns to total solo mode onLuxor. Recorded with an acoustic guitar one afternoon in June 2002 as a 50th birthday present to himself (the CD was originally given to the audience at his London birthday gig in March 2003), it's essentially a live recording without an audience. It's also Hitchcock's best and most personal solo album in years. There's still weird stuff (" She's got a thing for yams" he repeats on "Penelope's Angles"). ButLuxoris highly autobiographical and, accordingly, features some gorgeous love songs, including "You Remind Me of You" (produced by and featuring Jon Brion on piano), "One L," "Solpadeine" (which mentions the Soft Boys, for whom some of the songs were first intended), and "Idonia," a tale of unrequited love, described as only Hitchcock describes it: "All the ghosts in love with you, they crane their sorry necks like a Viennese machine that's just discovered sex." Beautiful!--Bill Holdship