Robert Wyatt Albums (13)
What The Critics Say
More immediately accessible and warm than Cuckooland, more ambitious than Shleep, Comicopera, in three acts, is the end result of Robert Wyatt looking around and examining the craziness and wild unpredictability in real life in 2007. Knowing one man's opinion of things hardly matters, he brings together musicians from Israel, Spain, England, Norway, Cuba, Brazil, and Colombia in songs that originate with him, but also from these places and Italy. It's full of humor, horror, absurdity, shoulder-shrugging "what?"-styled confusion, exasperation, and even nostalgia, though his particular brand of that is with the eyes wide open. The sound of the record is what immediately separates it from its predecessors: it feels more like a recording made in a studio with a live band than one assembled in pieces. And indeed, in many cases, that's what happened. Old friends like Brian Eno, Phil Manzanera, and Annie Whitehead are present, some not so old ones like Paul Weller and Karen Mantler, and other collaborators he has more recently encountered in Anja Garbarek, Orphy Robinson, Yaron Stavi, Mônica Vasconcelos, Gilad Atzmon, Chucho Merchán, Maurizio Camardi, and Alfonso Santimone, just to name a few, with songwriting contributions from his companion Alfie Benge, Garbarek, and Eno, among others. The first five tracks, under the heading "Lost in Noise," are centered on personal observations of love and loss, and at 62, Wyatt has seen his share of friends pass on and ends with a bomb going off. The middle section "The Here and Now," from cuts six through eleven, examine what it actually means to be English under these circumstances -- i.e. in a war -- and the third, "Away with the Fairies," in tracks 12-16, is where Wyatt's narrator, utterly fed up with the messiness, violence, conflict, and the real noise of life, completely abandons singing in the English language. The truth of the matter is it sounds far more "high concept" than it is. Wyatt claims that his method of working is that he just collects bits of things and puts them together. The songs in the first section are lovely, tender, bittersweet, airy, and melancholic. On "Stay Tuned," Wyatt sings as a narrator who is nothing more than particles of air: "In between/lost in noise/somewhere/somewhere..." as Garbarek's voice soars wordlessly above in between verses, as Eno's keyboards and effects, Seaming To's clarinet and harmony vocal, Whitehead's trombone, and Stavi's bass violin create a kind of chamber jazz around those words, hovering in the front. Letting the words assert themselves like a whisper in the ear or a voice in a dream, Vasconcelos takes the lead vocal as the accusing betrayed lover on the jazzy pop ballad "Just as You Are," and Wyatt takes on the mess, about trying to make excuses. The center is punctuated by Paul Weller's guitar, Wyatt playing hand percussion, and Stavi's bass violin creating the most taut sort of discomfort between the voices. England becomes a place where there is a beautiful day for walking about -- as Manzanera's guitar strolls along through "A Beautiful Peace" before Wyatt lets the cat out of the bag: "but not here," because a bomb has gone off and war has begun. Religion gets skewered too -- albeit with his characteristic subtle and dry wit despite the very real anger and emotion -- and the jazz just keeps coming. Wyatt's narrator switches places amid the finger popping subtle jazz and lilting rock tunes and he becomes the bomber (he makes no distinction as to which one is officially military or terrorist because all the man wants is peace, not bombs of any kind) as well as the bombed, who have either no idea what the hell is going on or who have done their own part to participate by their blind and numb assent. There is a hint of what's to come in part three with the instrumental "On the Town Square," with Wyatt on cornet, Del Bartle on electric guitar, and Gilad Atzmon's tenor saxophone, all playing around a killer rhythm by Robinson on steel pans. ("A Beautiful War" is a scathing indictment of the wars we watch on TV without wondering about the consequences of them.) His and Mantler's voices here are almost like nursery rhymes: "It's a beautiful day/For a daring raid/I can see my prey from afar/So I open the hatch/And drop the first batch/It's a shame I'll miss the blaze/But I'll see the film within Days/And I'll get to see the replay/Of my beautiful day..." On the next cut, "Out of the Blue," the aftermath of such actions becomes clear: he and Eno wrap their voices in something akin to true strangeness and horror: "For Reasons beyond all understanding/You've blown my house apart/You've set me free/To let you know/you've planted/everlasting hatred in my heart/You've planted your everlasting hatred in my heart." Jazz is a not so subtle subtext here, as a social force as well as an aesthetic one, and while these songs of Wyatt's and his collaborators may not be rooted in what Blue Note releases these days as acceptable, they are far more interesting. These tunes are also quite literally almost as accessible in their way as anything on the mighty Domino imprint (Franz Ferdinand's home) that this set has been issued on, even without screaming guitars and popping snare drums. In the third section, Wyatt's protagonist just goes off to find out what else is in the world, singing in Spanish and Italian. Poems by Lorca are set to music (and Wyatt plays a mean pocket trumpet as well as keyboards, and handles percussion). Abandonment of the conflict seems like the only proper thing for a world citizen to do. Here is where players like Robinson playing steel pan drums and vibes, subdued Latin and Caribbean rhythms, and jazz all get mixed up together in a seamless and quite lovely brew. (Check the instrumental by Robinson called "Pastafari.") The final cut may be a bit troubling in that it is a reading of Carlos Puebla's homage to Che Guevara, "Hasta Siempre Comandante." But it's nostalgic, not defiant; not blind assent, but a reverie, that if anything seems to wonder what happened to get from idealism to this place the protagonist finds himself in. And, if idealism is to come from anywhere, it must come from outside the English-speaking world. It's one of the hippest tracks here, played by a killer Italian band (with help from the voices of Wyatt, Mantler, and Vasconcelos), playing a wonderful meld of rhumba and jazz. Comicopera may not be all comic, and indeed inverts the entire comic opera notion of beginning with a catastrophe and ending with redemption, but Wyatt's never been so simple. What he has been, however, is close to brilliant, and this delightfully engaging little set will, if heard, more likely than not bring more people sniffing 'round his large body of work than anything he's done since the early '90s. ~ Thom Jurek, All Music Guide
'Theatre Royal Drury Lane'
Release Date 10/11/2005
Tracks 14
Label Wyatt
See Album Tracklist and Review
What The Critics Say
Recorded on September 8, 1974, this set features Robert Wyatt (post-accident) with a slew of mates, including Ivor Cutler! Introduced by John Peel and recorded by the BBC -- only a little over half the concert survives -- this is a wild, freewheeling document featuring Wyatt, Cutler, and Julie Tippetts on vocals; Dave Stewart and Tippetts on keyboards; alternate drummers Nick Mason and Laurie Allan; Hugh Hopper on bass; Fred Frith on guitar, violin, and viola; the late Mongezi Feza on trumpet; the late great Gary Windo on reeds; and guitarist Mike Oldfield. It's quite a lineup and an awesomely inspiring performance. Wyatt is in excellent form here, and the bandmembers, who are a bit ragged in places, are nonetheless tight and full of fire. From "Dedicated to You But You Weren't Listening" and "Memories" to "Alfie," "Instant Pussy," "Mind of a Child," and "Little Red Robin Hood Hit the Road," this set is alternately an early tribute recording to Wyatt and a fine get-together of friends from the Canterbury scene. Sonically, the recording is very present, though a bit overloaded in places, but the music more than compensates for this. All Wyatt fans will need this, as it is as close to an essential document of 1970s experimental/prog as one is likely to find. ~ Thom Jurek, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
Robert Wyatt's first full-length of new material since 1997's Shleep is no less mischievous, witty, and poignant. As has become his custom, Wyatt offers a set of 16 new songs seemingly composed for a wide array of musicians including Annie Whitehead, Eno, David Gilmour, Tomo Hayakawa, Karen Mantler, Phil Manzanera, Paul Weller, and others he enlisted to record it. The album is divided into two halves. The first eight selections being 'neither here...' while the last eight are 'nor there...'. What divides the halves are in Wyatt's mind and aesthetics alone, as the disc feels like a seamless, unified whole. From the opener, "Just A Bit," a dastardly yet delightful bit of cynicism directed at organized religion and new age phoniness, the listener hears Wyatt in good humor with razor-sharp political sensibilities, and in fantastic musical form. The songs on Cuckooland are, in many ways, the most accessible he's written since Nothing Can Stop Us. Shleep had its moments in terms of this kind of "accessibility," but more often than not saturated itself in Wyatt's consummate and wonderfully listenable weirdness. Here, on cuts like "Old European," one of five collaborations with poet Alfreda Benge, Wyatt's wife, French salon music, smoky jazz from the cool jazz era, bossa rhythms, and Anglo melodies entwine in a bewitching nocturnal pop song. Others, such as "Beware," one of a pair of writing collaborations with Karen Mantler -- who contributed two more fine songs written for Wyatt'set -- feature the strident harmonics of post-millennial jazz as it intersects in dialogue with pop forms from the ancient to the future. Mantler's and Wyatt's voices sound lovely together in this tale of paranoia and woe, and Wyatt's trumpet solo is gorgeous. Wyatt's reading of Ms. Benge's "Lullaloop" is a gorgeous, wooly bit of swinging New Orleans jazz, shot through with Weller's bluesy, distorted, electric guitar solo and big, wondrous trombones by Whitehead. Wyatt covers, in his own fashion, the Boudleaux Bryant's classic "Raining In My Heart," accompanied only by his piano, and does a stellar, deeply emotional take of the Jobim & DeMoraes' classic "Insensataez." Wyatt's "Trickle Down"" is a knotty bit of loping post bop jazz interspersed with sax samples from "Old Europe," and killer double bass runs from Yaron Stavi. "Lullaby For Hamza," and the instrumental "La Anda Yalam" (the latter written by Nizar Zreik), portrayt two sides of the Gulf Wars, one dovetailing the other, bringing about with unnerving, poetically moving, and damning conviction, the side of these wars not often revealed to Westerners. These are tomes full of melodic and harmonic creativity, offered as deathly serious as words of elegance and grace, and become elegies sending the listener off with more to think about than a pop album would normally dictate. Wyatt has decorated his own booklet with lively, minimal artworks, and has annotated his songs to document certain facts, locations and occurrences, making the entire package indispensable. Most importantly, Wyatt has demonstrated once again that it makes no difference what else is going on in the pop world, he still creates a fiercely independent and wide open notion of song and composition that is always abundantly "musical," topically relevant, as well as entertaining, provocative, and completely, utterly engaging from top to bottom. ~ Thom Jurek, All Music Guide
'Dondestan (Revisited)'
Release Date 11/3/1998
Tracks 10
Label Thirsty Ear
See Album Tracklist and Review
What The Critics Say
The original issue of Dondestan, one of Robert Wyatt's later, signature recordings, ran over budget, prompting him to release the album without an authoritative final mix. Wyatt, unlike many of the artists of his era, has often been in the unenviable position of having the original unmixed tapes of his records either disappear or get erased. Dondestan was the lone exception and he took full advantage. Where the original recording was a seamless whole, full of spare, haunting, keyboard and percussive textures, Revisited showcases the collaborations with his wife, poet Alfreda Benge, his own songs, and a collaboration with former Soft Machine bandmate Hugh Hopper, as separate entities, standing on their own as songs, rather than as episodes in a drifting non-narrative of poetics ("Sight of the Wind"), communism ("C.P. Jeebies"), and abstract reflections on postmodern life ("N.I.O."). It's fitting that, even though the original order of the songs hasn't been changed, his and Benge's songs being placed squarely in the middle of the recording act as bridges to Wyatt's political notions. It humanizes the ideology, rather than the other way around. Also, on certain tracks, such as "Sight of the Wind" and "Worship," as well as "Lisp Service," Wyatt was able to bring the ambient textures that were all but inaudible on the original, into prominent hearing, changing, in effect, the timbre and flavor of these songs and others, making something already somewhat ethereal -- if very humorous in places -- into a work almost ghostly with its hovering presence. When this project was first announced, many of Wyatt's faithful were apprehensive, this writer included -- after all, why tamper with a masterpiece? There was no need for concern. The result made a great work of art a sublime one. ~ Thom Jurek, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
Robert Wyatt has been quoted as declaring that this record was "a conscious attempt to make un-misusable music," i.e., music that couldn't be appropriated by the right or broadcast on Voice of America. VOA doesn't broadcast uncommercial music such as this in any case, but Wyatt did succeed in stating some of his political concerns -- imperialism, the carnage in East Timor, the flaws of rigid political ideology -- in an understated manner. He went back to writing his own material for this album, after having focused on eclectic "covers" in the early '80s, with fair success. It's perhaps an even moodier outing than usual for Wyatt, his melancholia amplified by the foggy, spooky keyboards. It was reissued on CD in 1990 as half of Compilation, which also includes the entirety of Nothing Can Stop Us. Somewhat confusingly, it was also reissued on CD as half of Mid-Eighties, an entirely different Gramavision release that adds eight tracks from assorted EPs, singles, and compilations of the time. ~ Richie Unterberger, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
Robert Wyatt continues to follow his singular musical path with the lovely Shleep, delivering another album of considerable quirky charm and understated beauty; a less melancholy affair than much of his recent work, the record is informed by a hazy, dreamlike quality perfectly in keeping with the elements of subconsciousness implicit in the title. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
When Robert Wyatt followed up his welcome return of a CD (Dondestan) with this EP "only" two years later, some fans thought a new era of productivity had hit the reclusive singer. (Alas, it took until 1998 for a full-length follow-up to appear.) A Short Break is a musical scrapbook, a glimpse of half-thought ideas and hints of melody -- atmospheres, not songs. Armed with a lone piano, a set of cymbals, some rudimentary percussion, an organ, and his plaintive voice, Wyatt's pieces are melancholy, sad, and contemplative. They are also, it must be added, not that interesting, and worth listening to only because the man is capable of so much more (it would not have even been released if it was anybody else). Only "Unmasked" could have made it onto Dondestan, and sounds like an outtake. More fascinating are the childhood photos and short essay by Wyatt that accompany the CD. ~ Ted Mills, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
For half of these songs, Wyatt put music to the poetry of his wife Alfreda Benge; he wrote both words and music for the remainder (with the exception of "Lisp Service," whose music was written by ex-Soft Machine bassist Hugh Hopper). Roughly speaking, the collaborations with Benge are more abstract, and the other compositions more politically oriented, dealing with concerns such as Palestine, privatization, and the Communist Party (the wittily titled "CP Jeebies"). If you're worried that this is agit-prop, don't fret; it's all delivered with Wyatt's typical understated melancholy, subtle humor, and trademark eerie keyboards. Indeed, the mix of jazz, pop, and progressive rock--owing, as ever, little to contemporary trends--is appealing enough that it may take a while for the subversive lyrical ideas to make themselves apparent. ~ Richie Unterberger, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
As a soundtrack for Victor Schonfield's animal liberation documentary showing the excesses of vivisection, The Animals Film will disappoint fans of Wyatt's vocals -- they are scarcely on this mini-album, and only as another instrument. Instead, The Animals Film features moody, dark piano instrumentals filled out with programmed drums, a splash of guitar, and an assortment of very tasty-sounding analog synths from the late '70s. The title track is the best of the bunch, a simple piano theme that dips and dives where you least expect it, with Wyatt's vocals doubling the melody. Once only available on vinyl, the tracks can now be found on the Thirsty Ear EP box set. ~ Ted Mills, All Music Guide
