Robert Wyatt, the 62-year-old English musician who is perhaps most famous for his drumming and singing stint in ’60s psychedelic band Soft Machine, has just released one of the most notable albums of 2007, “Comicopera.” It is a beautiful, complex production that spans three acts, features two handfuls of global songwriting contributions, and fuses jazz elements, Caribbean percussion and Wyatt’s singularly moving tenor under a thematic banner of world peace.
Wyatt was an influence with enough largesse even by 1973; when he fell from a third floor window during a party and became paralyzed from the waist down, Pink Floyd performed two benefit concerts to raise money for his recuperation. Since that accident, after participating in fusion big band Centipede and instrumental outfit Matching Mole, Wyatt has been performing solo, releasing albums under his own name that meld jazz and progressive rock and showcase collaborations with fellow English music heavyweights, ranging from the Jam’s Paul Weller to ambient iconoclast Brian Eno. The understatedly ambitious “Comicopera,” both a concept album and a rock opera, is no exception.
The first act, titled “Lost in Noise,” begins with “Stay Tuned,” a plaintive and moving cover of the Anja Garbarek song led by Wyatt’s age-worn but ringing voice, immediately recognizable by his low range and slight lisp. The verse sections are sparse, with simple percussive drumming, jazz stylized bass lines, and melancholic saxophone and piano melodies. The song coalesces during the chorus with Wyatt’s dark lyrics, existentially about the desperate desire by Wyatt to connect with listeners despite being only “particles in the air.” Thom Yorke remarked that this first track was so beautiful, he had trouble listening to the rest of the album. Second track “Just As You Are,” a jazzy pop ballad featuring overlapping guest vocals punctuated by the sonic pleasure of Weller’s guitar and Eno’s piano contributions, is equally problematic.
The second act, “The Here and the Now,” and third act, “Away with the Fairies,” are no less compelling. The eighth track, “On the Town Square” is playfully instrumental, centering on Jamaican style steel drumming punctuated by a saxophone solo; and the 13th track, “Cancion de Julieta,” is music set to a poem by Frederico GarcÃa Lorca. All of the songs comprising third act are sung in Italian and Spanish for thematic reasons too extensive to delve into. That can’t be said about most albums put out in 2007 ““ or ever. “Comicopera” is organic, thoughtful, melodic and just a little bit weird. After all, the term “Wyatting,” named for the ability of less-accessible Wyatt songs played publicly on a jukebox to clear a pub, wasn’t coined for nothing.
““ Natalie Edwards
E-mail Edwards at nedwards@media.ucla.edu.