Robert Wyatt - Cuckooland/Comicopera

In my eyes the major issue of critics is the inability to grasp the present . For example look at the magazine Uncut, rating Arcade Fires debut with 4/5 and later on awarding it best of the year. This really points to how unappreciative they are of the great Robert Wyatt and more precis his last two albums Cuckooland and Comicopera. They aren't weird enough to be instantly recognisable as something properly new, unique and simply brilliant or formulaic enough to be properly recognisable. What they are however is something far more dangerous, subversive.

They key to understanding these two albums lie within one very basic principle, context. The context or more appropriately genre, in this case being 70's folk/psychadelic/jazz music with a disturbingly precise pop edge. What is important note here as well is that its all being filtered through the offbeat mind of Robert Wyatt himself into a single flowing vision.

The sonic landscape of these two albums are very similar and could quite easily be described as the sound of a well recorded jazz group with synthesizer pads and vocals. Interestingly enough, they are so well made that everything simply sounds acoustic, and by a

coustic i mean organic.

I guess a big part of how you in the end feel about the music is how you will hear Wyatts voice. It has been described by Brian Eno something along the lines of sounding like the worlds smallest man. In my ears it would be more accurately described as the antithesis to Louis Armstrong. Which is an interesting comparison for a couple of reasons, but mostly because of the fact that both Wyatt and Armstrong lean heavily on playing Trumpet and singing and because Wyatts music sound very much like a psychadelic version of What A Wonderful World (and yes, that is a very good thing).

You might ask yourself now if this could possibly be relevant in the 21st century? The short answer is yes. The long one that Wyatt has looked back upon the music from the last 40 years and channeled it by picking different bits and pieces from different genres across different decades and then putting them back together according his own aesthetic sensibilities.

What makes it even more resonating are the lyrics which often are at the very heart of Wyatts compositions. Often dealing in quite tough subject matters, Cuckooland definitel

y being a very dark affair with themes such as the holocaust and detonation of the atom bomb over japan. Though this could be easily missed if you didn't pay close attention.

To make a choice between the two albums is in my position impossible, but, if someone held a gun to my head i would go with Cuckooland for two reasons.

1) It contains a guitar solo by the great David Gilmour

2) The track Foreign Accents is staggering in its simplicity and genius

If I would describe Wyatt it would be that of Bilbo after returning to the Shire. After defying the world in a struggling journey he has returned to us to tell us all about it. We sit around the bonfire and listen to him speak of great magic and terrible monsters. However if we listen closely we can detect a hint that something is wrong. That he is here, but not really here at all. That when he came back he had left a part of himself out there.