My favorite Robyn Hitchcock songs are not always the most clever. Sure, who else can pull off "My Wife and My Dead Wife" or "I Got the Hots"? No one, that's who. But if there is justice in songwriting heaven, the lit-rock master will also be judged for his lower-key character studies.

Luminous Groove, a flawless, five-disc set (Yep Rec) collecting Hitchcock's first three '80s albums with the Egyptians, is full of these moments. Take "Raymond Chandler Evening," which falls in the center of 1986's Element of Light. Just 127 seconds long, the song, adorned by a plucked electric guitar, bass, and cymbal, is as spare and gloomy as anything in the Hitchcock catalog. It comes soon after we've been treated to the best pop song John Lennon never recorded ("Somewhere Apart") and before a darkly delicious electric ballad ("Never Stop Bleeding") that connects the miserable thread that runs from death to drugs to the wedding altar.

That's Element of Light. The record that came out a year earlier is nearly as good. Fegmania! was the first to feature Hitchcock's Egyptians, who were basically Hitchcock's seminal late-'70s band, Soft Boys, minus guitarist Kimberly Rew. The three albums in this set, the Gotta Let This Hen Out! concert plus a bonus track each of rarities and live performances, show Hitchcock unafraid to get loud, an important change considering his 1984 album, I Often Dream of Trains, was all acoustic.

There are some who will grumble that Luminous contains only a few more bonus tracks than 1995's excellent Rhino reissues. That's fine, except that the sound on these albums has been upgraded and beyond that, the Rhino discs are no longer available.

-Geoff Edgers, Boston Globe