Robyn Hitchcock: Sex, Food, Death, and Insects

D: John Edginton

In 2006, songwriter and former Soft Boy Robyn Hitchcock gathered some of his closest musical friends about him and recorded an album of new material at a West London townhouse. For one week, his wonderfully cryptic songs bloomed against the backdrop of ivy-strewn alleys and sun-filled studies, songs that were pure Hitchcock, with modest yet surprising turns of melody and literary lyrics full of the existential black humor he continually calls on to redeem what he calls humanity’s “horribly bleak” condition. There’s nothing bleak about Edginton’s documentary, however, which paints these recording sessions and the resulting tour as a sort of musical idyll, a tiny paradise where Hitchcock and his mates could revel in the beauty of a few simple chords, the company of likeminded spirits, and the joys of spontaneous creation.


11am, Alamo Downtown

This article appears in March 16 • 2007.

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