Sometimes the greatest sessions happen spontaneously. Like this one, when Robyn Hitchcock played in Utrecht with Emma Swift and agreed to also record a session the next morning. At the (now closed) shop Still in Utrecht’s city center, the former The Soft Boys front man recorded The Incredible String Band’s Nightfall, Bob Dylan’s Señor (Tales of Yankee Power) and The Man Who Loves The Rain.

A folky Scottish hippie kind of mystical acoustic psychedelic group.

With a career now spanning six decades, Robyn Hitchcock remains a truly one-of-a-kind artist. A deeply individualistic songwriter and stylist, Hitchcock has traversed myriad genres with humor, intelligence, and originality over more than thirty albums.

“Have you heard of Robin Williamson and The Incredible String Band? They were going in the sixties, a folky Scottish hippie kind of mystical acoustic psychedelic group. Nightfall is the last track on The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter, their album from 1968. They were really big in the ’67, ’68 flower power time. They were very mystical.”

Shufflemania!

Robyn Hitchcock also recorded his own song The Man Who Loves The Rain, from his then just released album Shufflemania! (2022). It’s one of my favourite songs on that beautiful record. And Hitchcock wouldn’t be Hitchcock if he didn’t already release another (instrumental) record in the time it took me to get this session online: 2023’s Life After Infinity.

Photos

Keep watching

Thank you for watching and enjoying this session. You’ll probably like some other sessions from The Influences’ archive too, like this earlier one by Jason Falkner.