"Hi, is my hair all right?" Thus begins the soundtrack to Storefront Hitchcock, the musical companion to the Jonathan Demme film of the same name. Filmed over a two- day period in a deserted building in Greenwich Village in 1992, it's a performance video of Soft Boy- turned- Egyptian- turned- solo troubadour Robyn Hitchcock, unplugged. And not only does it exhibit his panoply of outrageously- printed shirts, but it captures his eccentric brilliance like lightening in a bottle.

"1974," one of four tracks written specifically for the film (the others being the endearing "Let's Go Thundering," "No, I Don't Remember Guildford" and "Where Do You Go When You Die") is a choice installment of Hitchcock's offbeat wit and power of observation. ("You've got hair in places most people haven't got brains.")

The majority of the tracks were taken from one of nature's most perfect albums, Moss Elixir, and are all interspersed with eccentric banter that entails merry chronicles about life, love and a church full of corpses, among other things. The album's simplicity adds to its memorability-- the lone sources of the film's footage are Hitchcock, his six- string, Deni Bonet, her violin, and occasionally Tim Keegan and his guitar.

Even though its been two years since Moss Elixir's release, and even though Hitchcock's next "official" album isn't due out until later on this spring, it's a fine portrait of an Englishman in New York.

-Susan Moll