It’s few people who can actually boast that their collapsing disaffection for the vicissitudes of modern British life can be best defined by refusing to sing in their native vernacular and resorting to Spanish and Italian to complete an album. But that’s Robert Wyatt – the man with the impossibly poignant voice, a five octave vocal range challenged only by a rather unassuming and unpretentious Home Counties accent and wheelchair bound purveyor of all lusty absurdities of war and peace and crime and amusement. Disaffection is the very oil that greases his wheels; his 1982 cover of Elvis Costello’s ‘Shipbuilding’ is testament to that – the last in an illustrious list of politically agitating cover-versions served up with all of Wyatt’s characteristic wide-eyed wonder and tender, unrelenting innocence. If the anti-matter of war threatens to pull you and your world into the spiralling moral vacuum of life outside your window, Comicopera provides a suitable anchor, a place of safety, a comfort zone. ‘Stay Tuned’ shares our moment, riding the waves of a gravely unsuitable current with a steady, reassuring hand and the gentlest of motions; a clarinet, drum brushes, a cymbal, a piano, a double-bass and a wailing, hypnotic sea-harpy. As beautiful a salvage operation as one could imagine.
The follow-up to 2003’s Mercury nominated ‘Cuckooland’ album and divided into three Acts – ‘Lost in Noise’, ‘The Here and The Now’, and ‘Away with the Fairies’,
Wyatt describes the album as illustrating the ‘unpredictable mischief of real life’ – why and how we do the things we do, the chaos of our souls – ‘looking for fun and stimulus and meaning and stuff’. And as is characteristic of the man, Wyatt illustrates this chaos with the three beautifully paced acts that tick like a clock, purr like the heart of a lover and sparkle with the purest of intentions.
A quietly adventurous album yielding no small amount of pleasure and brimming with affection the album pursues a largely jazzy course and comes backed by an able supporting crew that includes Gilad Atzmod, Phil Manzarena, Paul Weller and Brian Eno.
Werid, wonderful and very likely to make my Top Ten albums of 2007.
Bjork loves him. Jarvis Cocker loves him. Why not you?
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