The Guardian
December 11, 1998
Robyn Hitchcock, Storefront Hitchcock (Warner Bros)
by Caroline Sullivan
Is perennial-outsider Hitchcock, the English eccentric even Syd Barrett would find odd, finally bound for chart glory? Probably not, but this album -- approximately his fifteenth since the dissolution of his band The Soft Boys -- may at least provide a boost. It's the soundtrack to a Jonathan Demme film of Hitchcock playing live a New York department-store window, and carries Demme's worshipful endorsement ("It was such a bountiful pleasure to meet you, to collaborate with you.") Essentially, then, a live album, embellished between songs by long anecdotes that tend to be more entertaining than the songs themselves. Hitchcock's oeuvre is straightforward guitar-and-ragged-vocals, the selling point his idiosyncratic lyrics ("There's a justice in this world and I know just what she's called, she's called 'Elaine'/There's a dead man in your heart and he takes up too much room, he's called 'Steve'"). For connoisseurs of student humour.
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