Rock Bottom - Robert Wyatt

Rock Bottom (Robert Wyatt, 1974)

1. Sea Song - 6:31

2. A Last Straw - 5:46

3. Little Red Riding Hood Hit the Road - 7:40

4. Alifib - 6:55
5. Alife - 6:31
6. Little Red Robin Hood Hit the Road - 6:08

After a fall from a window left former Soft Machine/Matching Mole drummer Robert Wyatt paralyzed from the waist down, his career as a rock drummer was ended, but his songwriting muse reasserted itself. For the set of songs that would form Rock Bottom, he trimmed back musical excess, creating simple yet moving songs with oblique, charming melodies, impressionistic lyrics, and a few touches of the outré.

The songs flow together nicely. “Sea Song” is an ode to girlfriend Alfreda Benge (“Your lunacy fits nicely with my own”) sung over warm synthesizer and haunting Mellotron voices. It ends with a trademark Wyatt scat, yet the performance is harrowing, almost like he's crying forth emotions that can't be put into words, instead of just singing “la-la”s. “A Last Straw” features more straightforward lyrics and a climbing chord progression, building slowly to the Latin rhythms of “Little Red Riding Hood Hit the Road,” complete with horn section. The singing is hard-core British, though, including an “Oh blimey!” and even a monologue by Scottish poet/comic Ivor Cutler about hedgehogs and sleeping in traffic. The words are delightfully insane, calling up the image of someone trying to hang onto the tattered shreds of a mind, seeking solace in silliness in the face of despair.

The second half starts with “Alifib,” the spare instrumental arrangements shrouding a solitary vocal, singing mostly nonsense syllables to a melancholic yet classical melody. The nonsense is strangely moving, especially after repeated listens: “Nit not nit, nit no not / Nit nit folly bololey / Alifi my larder / Alifi my larder / I can't forsake you / or forsqueak you / Alifi my larder / Alifi my larder.” It transitions smoothly to “Alife,” which has the same lyrics, only spoken in fitful starts over some sort of brittle keyboard setting. The sequence ends in Alfreda's spoken word response, which is a delightful combination of reproof and coddling: “I'm not your larder / jammy jars and mustard / I'm not your dinner / you soppy old custard. / And what's a bololey / when it's a folly? / I'm not your larder / you dear little dolly.”

The final track starts as a fairly traditional rock song, with some searing lead guitar and harmony vocals. The focus of the lyrics finally turns outward to the “garden of England,” and there is a hint that the tattered mind is collecting itself and looking around again. It's just for the first half, though, as Ivor Cutler reprises his earlier role and expands the monologue to the heights of a Brit's quiet desperation, rolling his r's and over-pronouncing like a true Shakespearean:

I fight with the handle of my little brown broom
I pull out the wires of the telephone
I hurt in the head and I hurt in the acting bone
Now I smash up the telly with remains of the broken phone
I fighting for the crust of the little brown loaf
I want it I want it I want it give it to me
I give it you back when I finish the lunchtea.

For me, the lyrics make this album. The music is pleasant enough, but it's true purpose is to provide a framework for the lyrical play. Admittedly, the lyrics are bizarre, disjointed, and rambling, but they provide a moving portrait of a man trying to hold on to humor and melody after literally hitting rock bottom.

Arbitrary rating: 5 out of 5 crusts of the little brown loaf