One of the most unexpected treats of the past decade has been having singular English songsmith Robyn Hitchcock in Music City. He took up residence here with partner and fellow songsmith Emma Swift, and he's popped up at shows when he’s not playing his own around town; he and Swift also started a delightfully surreal ongoing livestream series during pandemic lockdown.
Hitchcock also made one of his finest records yet in a catalog full of them, 2017’s Robyn Hitchcock, with a superb band of Nashvillians. Word has come that Hitchcock is releasing a follow-up LP called Shufflemania!, set for release Oct. 21 via his and Swift’s label Tiny Ghost Records. In the notes accompanying the record, Hitchcock offers a definition for shufflemania.
“It’s surfing fate, trusting your intuition, and bullfighting with destiny,” writes Hitchcock. “It’s embracing the random and dancing with it, even when it needs to clean its teeth. It’s probably the most consistent album I’ve made. It’s a party record, with a few solemn moments, as parties are wont to supply.”
Per a press release, a pre-COVID trip to the ancient temple of Quetzlcoatl in Tulum, Mexico, served as a spark of inspiration. As lockdown went on, Hitchcock found himself with an album’s worth of guitar-and-vocal recordings of new songs, which he sent out to an array of musician friends, including Kimberley Rew and Morris Windsor (of Hitchcock’s much-loved band The Soft Boys), Sean Ono Lennon, Pat Sansone, Eric Slick and even Johnny Marr, among many others who all contributed to the finished release. Hitchcock and Swift paid a visit to Abbey Road to track final vocals, with Swift producing, before producer-engineer Charlie Francis mixed the album.
Hitchcock has also released a lyric video for the high-octane, almost-titular track, “The Shuffle Man,” which features Brendan Benson on the harmony vocals. In notes accompanying the vid, Hitchcock illuminates the concept of The Shuffle Man, and thereby some of the more gnomic lines, like one verse that goes: “Don’t forget to function / Don’t be one of those / I’m gonna go / Where The Shuffle Man goes.”
“The Shuffle Man is the imp of change, the agent of fortune,” he writes. “He throws the cards up in the air and leaves you to deal with where they fall. He is the exhilaration of chaos — with fast hands and a stovepipe hat.”
Give that a spin and visit the Bandcamp link (or visit Hitchcock’s website) to preorder the album. According to the release, he’s got a fall tour lined up with dates in the U.K. and Norway, followed by some Georgia dates and finally a show at The Basement on Nov. 16; tickets aren’t on sale for that one just yet.
