The Philadelphia Inquirer
December 18, 1998
Robyn Hitchcock
Storefront Hitchcock -- Music From the Jonathan Demme Picture (Warner Bros.)
by A.D. Amorosi
As phosphorescently picturesque and threadbare as the staged live-performance film from which this collection is culled, Storefront is a deliciously spare (and long-overdue) testament to the mind of its shopkeeper.
Alone or with the aid of violinist Deni Bonet and guitarist Tim Keegan, Hitchcock dissects human deed and thought like a dadaist forensic psychologist. His words, never wasted, drip menacingly from very English lips, leaving humor and densely layered emotion to trickle out in trippy verbiage perfectly suited to his Anglo Folk Psychedelia. He takes on midlife crisis ("1974"), bitter tales from home ("No, I Don't Remember Guildford"), and love supreme ("Beautiful Queen") with a richly sardonic, titillating love of language. But it's his between-tunes patter that's most charmingly disturbing. Not since Lou Reed's Take No Prisoners has such talk revealed the crafty absurdity of an artist, giving every aspect of home and work a physiological twist. When he says, "If it weren't for our rib cages, we'd just be spleens a go-go," you somehow see what he's getting at.
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