The great British singer-songwriter Robyn Hitchcock, a man who’s been a rock ‘n’ roll cult hero since before most of us were born, is coming back next month with SHUFFLEMANIA!, his first new LP in five years. Hitchcock calls it his “proper pop album,” and he recorded it in different spots around the world during the pandemic era, getting help from friends and admirers like Brendan Benson and Johnny Marr. We’ve already posed first single “The Shuffle Man,” and now Hitchcock has also shared a new joint called “The Raging Muse.”

“The Raging Music” is a vaguely discordant power-pop jam full of big riffs and sidelong hooks. Hitchcock recorded the song with the help of You Am I leader David Lane, and it’s somehow tight and messy at the same damn time. In a press release, Hitchcock says:

Songs come to me alive and flickering, fresh from the lake of my subconscious. I’m a compulsive writer. “The Raging Muse” was written in Nashville in 2020. It began life as a sketchy home recording, just me and my old Telecaster — the same guitar I played on Element Of Light back in 1986 — this time around faithfully engineered by Tubby and Ringo. Once I had the bones of the song, I sent it to my friend Davey Lane in Melbourne, who fleshed it out with spiky lead guitar, and then onto Charlie Francis in Cardiff, who added the melodramatic piano and bagpipes. The fish in the grass in this song are one of my many recurring dreams, I’m sure they’ll appear again soon.

Check out the animated video for “The Raging Muse” below.

SHUFFLEMANIA! is out 10/21 on Tiny Ghost. Pre-order it here.