After nearly 30 years as a recording artist, Robyn Hitchcock still remains one of the most criminally underrated singer-songwriters of all time. It's bad enough that his first band, The Soft Boys, don't get the respect they deserve from the buying public for being a massive influence on big name bands such as The Flaming Lips and especially R.E.M; but his entire 25 year solo career has gone almost virtually unnoticed except for a rabidly miniscule fan base that hang onto his every whim (The Boneman and I being two of his most devout followers).

Hitchcock's 2004 album Spooked was quite the quiet masterpiece and it turned out to be one of the very best records of that year. Quiet being the operative word because it was mostly a Folk oriented album backed by Alt-Country aficionados/Hitchcock super-fans Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings. On his ensuing world tour supporting Spooked, Hitchcock nabbed Power-Pop masters The Minus 5 (another band indebted to The Soft Boys) to open for him and be his backing band. That relationship flourished into such a tight connection that Hitchcock convinced Minus 5 members Scott McCaughey (lead singer of The Minus 5 and touring guitarist for R.E.M.) Peter Buck (yes, that lead guitarist of R.E.M. Peter Buck) and Bill Rieflin (former Ministry drummer that has since become Bill Berry's permanent successor in R.E.M.) to follow him into the studio to cut some new tunes. McCaughey, Buck and Rieflin have re-dubbed themselves The Venus 3 for these sessions and eureka! Ole! Tarantula is the result.

Tarantula is Hitchcock's most Soft Boys sounding work since the Boys' own actual reunion album, Nextdoorland, was released back in 2002 (not surprising considering the source band members here). Founding S-Boys members Kimberly Rew (one of Buck's biggest guitar heroes) and Morris Windsor also guest on over half of Ole! and openers "Adventure Rocket Ship" and "Underground Sun" are upbeat rockers that would be right at home next to anything off of The Soft Boys' seminal album Underwater Moonlight. Not all of Tarantula however is just a rehashing of old familiarities. "Museum Of Sex" is a surprisingly horn driven number and "Belltown Ramble" is a delicately pretty piano ballad. Even XTC's own reclusive lead singer Andy Partridge shows up on "'Cause It's Love (Saint Parallelogram)" to help Hitchcock craft a near perfect Beatlesque tune. I thought for sure with the recent passing of Hitchcock's hero, former Pink Floyd mad capper Syd Barrett, that there would be a tribute song of some kind to Barrett. But the only tribute here is unexpectedly for Arthur "Killer" Kane, the New York Dolls bassist who surprisingly and suddenly died of Leukemia not long after his own reuinion with The Dolls. "N.Y. Doll" is Hitchcock's epitaph to him and no shock that it's the most achingly beautiful song of the Ole! bunch. Overall, Tarantula is yet another solid batch of Hitchcock classics primed to bite into any listener willing to give it a chance. Here's insisting that you let it infect yourself too.