Robyn Hitchcock: Spooked

There's a place in Arkansas called Crater of Diamonds State Park where, for a small admission fee, you can search for diamonds and keep those that you find. I've never been to the place, but my guess is that most people don't walk away with enough diamonds to make up for the $6.50 they drop to get inside.

Robyn Hitchcock's Spooked is kind of like the Crater of Diamonds State Park. There are some treasures sprinkled throughout the album, but they're few and far between, and you probably won't find enough of them to make up for the time and/or money you spent on the record.

Music:
I bought Robyn Hitchcock's Eye album many years ago, because "Beautiful Girl" is an awesome song, but the CD ended up in a used bin somewhere in Jersey because I needed rent money after the dot-com bust. Listening to Spooked reminds me of all the songs I'd forgotten off of Eye -- awful songs that I'm completely happy to have forgotten.

"Tryin' to Get to Heaven Before They Close the Door" is easily the best song on Spooked, and it's a perfect fit for a sad scene in an indie hipster movie. The rest of the album is lame. "Television" is one corny rhyme away from being an Adam Sandler song, and it's one of the better songs on the disc. Fortunately, there are little diamonds scattered throughout the album. Sometimes they come in the form of a lyrical phrase, and at others they appear as a short series of notes on the guitar or a vocal harmony. They're probably not worth the admission price, but they take away the sting if you've already shelled out your money.

Packaging: n/a
Normally I whine whenever the EPFL destroys a package to fit it into a jewel box, but not this time. I don't know what the deal was with the original packaging; maybe it was too weird to cut up and fit in a box, or maybe it got stolen or destroyed. Whatever the case may be, someone at the EPFL printed/photocopied the front and back covers and stuck them in a jewel box. That's really nice that they went through that much effort, just so I could read song titles while I'm driving.

Listen if you like: Violent Femmes, Leonard Cohen, sitting around and bragging about your eclectic taste in music

If it were food, it'd be: A dry, organic muffin that yields the very occasional treat of a juicy berry