Recorded in Nashville with Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, Robyn Hitchcock's 23rd solo album in as many years finds him continuing in the acoustic mold of Luxor but with a good dose of Americana, relying solely on the pair for accompaniment, backing vocals, and production. According to Hitchcock, Spooked is essentially the product of a weeklong Dylan-fueled jam session with Welch and Rawlings, a fan of whose Hitchcock had recently become but who had been fans of his for nearly 20 years. "It was as if I was inside one of their records, but with me singing too," said Hitchcock about the sessions, and their influence is indeed palpable, most notably on songs like the folksy "English Girl," with its plaintive guitar and Wurlitzer accompaniment, and the slide-heavy, drum-propelled "We're Gonna Live in the Trees."
Yet the real standout tracks are those to which Welch and Rawlings lend their harmonic talents, such as "Demons and Fiends" and especially "Television." The latter, an earnest, pleading song of love, is among the most heartfelt of Hitchcock's career, even with his bedroom TV set its nominal object. ("Television, I'm so sorry / If I turned you off back then / I'm so small in your dimension / My kid will look like you, I swear.") So it remains a safe bet that there never will be a Robyn Hitchcock album that can't be described at least partially as "quirky"--this one certainly fits the bill. But being able to express penetrating insight and emotion through superficially bizarre material has always been one of his major talents, and Spooked demonstrates that, at age 51, Robyn Hitchcock's best days are definitely not behind him.