There's only one song from "Rachel Getting Married" that's eligible for an Oscar. But that's not necessarily reflective of the role music plays in the film.

There's no real score to the film, at least not in the traditional sense. Instead, director Jonathan Demme has musicians on-screen in nearly every scene, noodling in the background. Their acoustic fiddling, picking up on strains of jazz and classical, becomes a personal, living chamber hall to pre-wedding tension played-out by the characters in the film.

It meant that some of the more pivotal scenes in the film, such as when Anne Hathaway's Kym purposely loses control of her car, would play out without a score. It helps lend a more natural feel to the proceedings, even when the film's grand wedding scene is blown out with massive drum processional and a performance from singer/songwriter Robyn Hitchcock.

"When something dramatic happens, normally there would be dramatic music, and you would know everything is getting out of control," Hitchcock tells Pop & Hiss. "But there isn't. The only music in there is provided by musicians. Everything is happening live, and it's an integral part of the film."

Hitchcock's original "Up to Our Nex" gets a showcase slot in "Rachel Getting Married." It's a buoyant little ditty, with a minor horn section and some dizzyingly jubilant guitar strumming. Electric guitar notes add a hint of spacey distortion, and its mix of absolution and stubbornness mirrors the tone of the film ("Forgive yourself, and maybe, you'll forgive me," Hitchcock sings).

The English musician and Demme have a long history, as the director shot the 1998 concert film "Storefront Hitchcock," and cast the artist in his 2004 remake of "The Manchurian Candidate." For "Rachel Getting Married," Hitchcock says the lyrics came to him after reading the script, and he then asked Demme if the director needed a song.

"I read the script and I wrote the song," Hitchcock says. "I didn't know if he had a song for the film. So I said, 'Do you want one?' He said, 'What have you got?' 'Up to Our Nex' is my take on the movie. It's a synopsis of what the movie is saying emotionally to me."

A number of musicians have been delving into performances of albums that have defined their oeuvre -- consider the concerts devoted to Brian Wilson’s “Pet Sounds,” Lou Reed’s “Berlin” and, most recently, Van Morrison’s “Astral Weeks.” Thursday night, at Largo at the Coronet, as part of a modest eight-city tour, Robyn Hitchcock revisited his 1984 record “I Often Dream of Trains.”

It was his third post-Soft Boys album, and it crystallized the singer’s sound in an indie-rock talisman that is often regarded as his best solo work. Hitchcock described the recording, which was reissued last year on Yep Roc -- and included on the five-CD box set “I Wanna Go Backwards” -- to the Largo audience as a “private album.”

Hitchcock appeared onstage as his “Sometimes I Wish I Was a Pretty Girl” was already playing, its sound coming from an audio recorder placed atop a piano. Snapping off the machine -- and dispensing with that song -- he then plinked out the album’s introductory “Nocturne.”

His spare acoustic songs were accompanied by Terry Edwards on keyboards and horns (attired in what the singer dubbed his “special branch” wardrobe) and “captain” Tim Keegan on guitar. Edwards and Keegan also joined Hitchcock in a bravura barbershop quartet-esque rendition of the jauntily psychoanalytic ditty “Uncorrected Personality Traits.”