While I can hardly improve on my review of Hitchcock's previous record, while I was fully expecting this to not be the best album of April - what can I possibly do when "Sayonara Judge" starts playing? Having that timeless, "N.Y. Doll"-sized melody that literally sucks your soul into infinity?
What can I possibly do when "Raymond And The Wires" is as pretty and disarmingly surreal as classic Robyn Hitchcock?
The trick is simple enough. Years ago, there was a corny music programme on the national television. A guy with a haircut and no imagination was interviewing artists and bands and playing snippets of their most famous songs. The Rolling Stones, Aerosmith, R.E.M., Live (yes, fucking Live)... The whole thing was shallow and painfully irrelevant.
However, there are things which stick, especially when you are impressionable and fourteen. Once, Sheryl Crow ("Leaving Las Vegas" is still a bloody good song) mentioned that when she and her friends heard a really exciting record back when she was a teenager, all they wanted to do was jump into a car and drive somewhere. Anywhere. Which they did.
And all these years later, I still believe this to be the measure of all music. The opening bars of "Detective Mindhorn" do that with great abandon - pumping as they do through your veins and whatever endless road lies ahead.
At some point you do of course realise that these are some of his best tunes since Olé! Tarantula. Caterpillars, autumn sunglasses, Virginia Woolf. The usual. "My eyes have seen a trolleybus in 1964...". There is no shame in knowing where your strengths lie.
