Our favorite eccentric Brit re-disbanded the reunion of his first band the Soft Boys in March, so there’ll be no full-band major-label followup to 2002’s enjoyable Nextdoorland. Instead, Luxor is the polar opposite—a DIY self-released set of acoustic songs recorded in a single afternoon in his living room: “I thought, screw it, I’ll just put a fresh set of strings on my guitar and play through whatever I can find in my notebook,” he’s said. It’s much better than that implies. Mostly Robyn has his full-on Nick Drake mode going here, though the unique imagery he brings to his lyrics makes it clear that this can be nothing other than a Hitchcock record. Nobody else writes folky laments like “she’s got a thing about yams. … I am not a yam, I am not a yam.” Luxor’s a good showcase for his underappreciated fingerstyle guitar work, with some fine songwriting throughout—“Round Song” could have come directly from his 1984 career-high I Often Dream of Trains.
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