Robert Wyatt Studio Albums Poll

Nothing Can Stop Us (1981) doesn't count??

This is brutally difficult.

Nothing Can Stop Us (1981) doesn't count??

maybe it should have. it's a singles comp, but i did leave in his soundtrack work. hmm...

I remind myself that Comicopera was my favorite album of 2007.

mine, too. but i listened to Rock Bottom tonight and couldn't deny it.

"rock bottom" all the way - for me it's the best album i've ever heard

I probably will not be able to answer until 11/9/08 6:59 pm

toss up between The End of an Ear, Old Rottenhat & Shleep. chose old rottenhat. the first wyatt i'd ever heard. a girl at a record shop i used to work at gave me her second copy and gave a coworker some french record. i was pretty bummed at the time thinking i'd rather have the french thing and am now so glad she did what she did because he's one of my all time favorite artists.

shleep all the way.

Rock Bottom by a mile... although all of them are great with the exception of "End of an Ear" which I find totally unlistenable.

Oh, and the Animals Film i find unlistenable too...

This is easy. If we were to choose second best though, that would indeed be brutally difficult.

"Rock Bottom" is the one.

Love for "Nothing can stop us now" ?

Not in the poll :(

Barring one of the comps, Rock Bottom.

Dondestan is the sleeper here. The one I go back to the most.

Rock Bottom or Cuckooland. Cuckooland album deserves way more respect for the extreme jazzy ambiance it entails. I remember it was up for a nomination for the Mercury Prize but Belle and Sebastian beat them that year.

Anyways I'll vote for Cuckooland so that Rock BOttom isn't the landslide winner. At least Cuckooland has more songs then Rock Bottom and perhaps more good songs than Rock Bottom because of this reason lol.

Sentimental favorite Shleep gets the vote. It was the first album I reviewed at the college radio station.

too hard

i, too, for shentimental reasons, somewot, 'll go gladly with old rottenhat.
(done :)

I think this is a poll where a much deserved landslide says very little of the other albums

I'll also rep for Cuckooland. I would bet that 9/10 people who have problems with it cite the keyboard pads -- which anyone who's listened to the record non-stop will tell you are actually quite amazing.

As much as I admire Rock Bottom, I listen to this more.

almost impossible. rock bottom or shleep, but rottenhatt and cuckooland are great too. beats me.

What Piero Scaruffi said.

I remind myself that Comicopera was my favorite album of 2007.

Yes, Comicopera was the best album in the year it was released. I can't say that about any of the others... so Comicopera it is.

These are all uniformly great to jawdropping, regardless.

yknow, i was reading about him today and was like, "how come i have none of this guys records, and in fact know nothing about what his music sounds like?"

i think i shall pick up rock bottom when i get the chance and move from there.

this dude is such an awesome dude. <3 wyatt.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

I remember being just totally stunned how polished and full-figured Shleep was when it came out -- esp. after Dondestan had felt so wan and skeletal. "Heaps of Sheep" has to be one of his best.

Rock Bottom

I don't think I can pick just one...I may abstain......

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Compare to the Mojo list:

1. Rock Bottom
2. Shleep
3. Ruth/Richard
4 (soft machine 1&2)
5 (Nothing can stop us)
6 (matching mole)
7. Cuckooland
8. Comicopera
9 (His Greatest Misses)
10. Old RottenHat

Dondestan not mentioned, End/Ear was one "to avoid"...

(ones in brackets = not included in this poll)

...

Not suprised at the number one spot, but gravely disappointed in Dondestan's score...

Maybe we should poll for our second favourite Wyatt album...

sounds like a good poll idea. do it!

Not surprised by 1 and 2 at all. I went with Rock Bottom.

you guys are all pussies. end of an ear is amazing

Ok, I'll say it:

Rock Bottom is my least favorite Robert Wyatt album. Don't get me wrong -- I like it quite a bit and sometimes wonder whether I love it.

But of the records I know (everything but Comicopera and Ruth is Stranger Than Richard) it's the one I have the hardest time making it all the way through.

For me, it's less the first real Wyatt solo album than a post-Soft Machine record -- w/ all the attendant dadaist wordplay, jazzy jamming though shot through a more womblike production.

But by and large, these are less songs than textures -- admittedly pretty great textures (I particularly like the way the piano is recorded) but textures nonetheless. In fact, for all the majesty of "Sea Song," I can't help but think that the rest of the material feels insubstantial by comparison.

Honestly, part of me wonders where this record would rank if "Sea Song" weren't on it (or if it were, say, track 4) or if he'd never fallen out of that window at the party (the songs were, IIRC, all written before his accident).

Didn't vote in this, would've been another one for Rock Bottom although I've only heard the top five here. I'd probably put Comicopera second, so much to take in on that record.

Rock Bottom is my least favorite Robert Wyatt album.

2 nights ago, without knowing what was on (initially) I listened to End of an Ear all the way through and found it interesting and complex. I listened to it again last night and couldn't figure out what I thought I was hearing the first time around. It seemed repetitive and occasionally irritating. I guess I'll do another listen for the tiebreaker.

rock bottom is my fav and i definitely wasn't "there"...unless "there" is my friend's house like a year and a half ago.

Yeah I wasn't there either, and Rock Bottom is one of my maybe top 10 albums ever. I don't mean to sound thickheaded but I almost find it weird not to think of it as his best, though I understand Naive Teen Idol's argument.

end of an ear is an interesting mess if i remember well. and my appreciation is definitely depending on my mood. there are times where i love nervous and chaotic music like that (in places it sounds almost like free jazz) and there are times i prefer something like on land

but can you put into words what you like so much about rock bottom, sonderangerbot or any other of the 22 voters?

But by and large, these are less songs than textures -- admittedly pretty great textures (I particularly like the way the piano is recorded) but textures nonetheless. In fact, for all the majesty of "Sea Song," I can't help but think that the rest of the material feels insubstantial by comparison.

― Naive Teen Idol, Wednesday, November 12, 2008 2:40 PM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

you are out of your fucking mind

other things besides "Sea Song" that I love about RB:

the title track, holy shit. how can you say that this beautifully formed song is nothing but texture?

the extended solo on "Little Red Riding Hood".

all of "Alifib" in its naked desperate pleading glory, I think the song is well served by just hanging there in stasis.

if I gave it another listen I could list more, but I think that is an adequate defense.

claiming these are 'less songs than textures' -- as if that can be held against it, but still an earless thing to say, you just try playing along to those chords without working them out beforehand and you will be lost. there's no verse / chorus / verse writing, but these songs sound great sung alone with solo piano.

& that oft-mentioned 'oh but the material was written before the accident' thing -- what makes this record special is that a very strange cross-section of the Canterbury / English prog scene came together to help Robert record this album in the wake of the accident. the 'textures' of this record are the sound of a huge group of friends coming together -- if people get sentimental over this record it is not (just) because of the backstory, it is because of the actual music that was pressed onto the record

the retrograde tape-splice on 'Little Red Riding Hood Hit the Road' right after he sings 'Stop it' (instead of stopping, the entire music simply starts playing backwards, then he begins singing a confession over the reversed melody of his backwards complaints) & Oldfield's guitar solo after 'Innit a shame...'

the title track

not quite true. little red riding hood hit the road is an amazing piece. those trumpets are pure bliss. maybe robert wyatt's best song altogether. that great jazz vibe.

Jon, that's a very well-articulated argument.

As for the "earless" comment about texture...first off, to be clear, I'm not making some Geir-ish statement that these aren't real "songs" -- but they're certainly not as fully-formed melodically as some of other things he's written. Compared to the unpredictable or disarmingly plaintive melodies that grace "Catholic Architecture," "Free Will and Testament," "The Age of Self," "Forest," or dozens of others, a lot of these songs are pretty modal and drone-y by comparison ("Alifib" is a minor blues) and the tunes reflect it. On, say, "Little Red Riding Hood..." not unlike Soft Machine, the melody feels more like a jazz solo than a head. No track on this comes close to "Sea Song" in terms of melody -- the songs have other virtues, obviously, but I don't think that's really an arguable point.

I do think it's easy to overstate the mythology of the record. Suggestions that the more dadaist lyrics represent Wyatt's garbled feelings toward Alfie while he was recovering and medicated with painkillers and the like are just anachronistically false (though I sometimes wonder if the late-90's reissue artwork of them both swimming suggests that Wyatt may now believe it himself).

But I am partial, as you are, to the Canterbury/prog scene rallying around Wyatt -- part of me wonders whether Nick Mason actually did produce this or if he just agreed to have his name on the sleeve to raise the record's sales a bit. Regardless, the production is, indeed, beautiful, and I don't doubt that the spirit of the sessions made it on to the record.

At any rate, Rock Bottom is clearly some kind of achievement and often very moving and beautiful -- even if I do sometimes find it to be willfully arty when I want it to be direct and distant when I want it to be emotional. As a result, it often feels a bit more like an extraordinary and unique experiment than Wyatt's raison d'être. And given how remarkable the rest of his career has proven to be, I'm not sure that's an altogether bad thing.

also this thread has gone too long without a WHUT WHUT for ivor cutler!

cuckooland deserves a lot more love. "old europe" swings!

I've got like 6-7 Robert Wyatt albums on my shelf yet I can't say I'm a huge fan of any of them. I mean, they're accomplished, but kind of snoozy... not sure why I've never clicked w/ him on a personal level.

dude has a thing about killer opening tracks

the major issue I have with falling for Wyatt's solo stuff is that he wrote one of my 3 favourite pieces of music ever made, and it was 19 minutes long, and it contained everything, but then he didn't do anything like it again

wrong person, "robert".

Rock Bottom and Cuckooland are my 2 choices
The new one is pretty good

Just picked up Cuckooland yesterday by chance. Gotta love clearance sections...

curious we should bump this thread as I prepare to wage furious defence of my #1 20th century track

"Nothing Can Stop Us" is the only one I've been able to get really into.

Don't get Dondestan disdain here. (Also Pitchfork gave the recent reissue something like a 4.8!)

It's among my favorites.

am most of the way thru comicopera. it's great.

Just got Cuckooland and, my god, this album. This fucking album.

for all the majesty of "Sea Song," I can't help but think that the rest of the material feels insubstantial by comparison.

Uh, the very next song is "A Last Straw".

love cuckooland

Happy birthday!

Comicopera is my favorite Wyatt.

Forest from Cuckooland is one of the most beautiful songs ever, also for some strange reason I could imagine Paul Robeson singing an even more beautiful version of it in his baritone voice.

"Heaps of Sheep" is one of the most perfect album openers ever. If I had heard that song even one time in college I bet I would've gotten super obsessed with Wyatt, but instead I just heard it recently, so it's happening now

I wish he'd come out of retirement :'/

xp agreed, also note the assist from Eno on that track

yeah! it's got a similar rhythm to a lot of great Eno tracks...Strange Overtones, Spinning Away, No One Receiving, a lot of the Eno/Hyde stuff...it's pretty recognizable as something he brings to his collaborations. I think this is the best iteration of it though