Robyn Hitchcock sought out some old friends to record his new album, Ole! Tarantula, and he found the Venus 3: Peter Buck, Scott McCaughey and Bill Rieflin. By enlisting "3/4s of the Minus 5 and half of R.E.M," Hitchcock has created what he calls, "the rockingest record I've made in years." While the album roars with the garage-fueled energy of his Soft Boys days, Hitchcock's lyricism continues to drive his songs. The New York Times says, "[His songs] bridge the psychedelia of Pink Floyd's Syd Barrett and the archetypal English 'nonsense' of Edward Lear," and Rolling Stone says, "Robyn Hitchcock's songs are a lot like the genetic code: they're tough to crack, but the secret of life is in there somewhere." In addition to the Venus 3 core group, Ole! Tarantula was engineered by Seattle mainstay Kurt Bloch and features a cast of recurrent and new characters in the Hitchcock story: Morris Windsor (Soft Boys/Egyptians), Sean Nelson (Harvey Danger), Chris Ballew (Presidents of The United States of America), Kimberl.