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In making his first "rock" record since 1993's Respect, Robyn Hitchcock recorded Jewels for Sophia using several different combinations of producers, locations, and collaborators, including members of the Young Fresh Fellows, Grant Lee Buffalo, R.E.M., and the Soft Boys. Not surprisingly, the record is an intentionally eclectic spectacle, spanning the breadth of Hitchcock's ever-expanding, strange universe. He has covered a lot of territory in the 23 years since founding the Soft Boys and much of it is recalled here, from the scalding rock & roll of the Kimberly Rew collaboration "NASA Clapping" to the blistering guitar gymnastics of "The Cheese Alarm" and the beautiful psychedelic folk of "No, I Don't Remember Guilford", all of which are coloured by Hitchcock's long-running themes of the absurdity of the human condition and our (often futile and surreal) attempts to make sense of it all. In spite this tumult, however, Jewels is primarily a collection of love songs. In "I Feel Beautiful", recorded with Grant Lee Phillips, it is the wonder of love that fills life's emptiness: "People never celebrate the things they've got / Honey, without you I wouldn't have a lot." Similarly, "Dark Princess" asserts love's salvation in an otherwise hollow existence, while the protagonist of "Antwoman" offers himself up to bloody sacrifice chanting his mantra of love's validation: "Being just contaminates the void." As always, Hitchcock's world view is as weird as it is wondrous, spanning the gap between all that is beautiful and horrible about life. --Paul Ducey
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