100. Rock Bottom — Robert Wyatt

1995 Mojo considered Rock Bottom to be the 100th best album ever. Pitchfork says it’s the 98th best album of the 1970s and the NME proclaimed it the 358th best album of all time.

However, as it didn’t come up in HMV’s “3 for 2” sales in the 1990s I’ve never heard it.

So, is it any good? Most importantly, is it better than Rock Bottom by Lynsey de Paul and Mike Moran? Seems unlikely.

Let’s give it a listen.

Side 1, Track 1: Sea Song.

You look different every time you come From the foam-crested brine It’s your skin shining softly in the moonlight

Partly fish, partly porpoise, partly baby sperm whale…

Sold!

Two sea mammals mentioned in the first minute and that’s not even the best lyric.

Joking apart, when you’re drunk you’re terrific,
When you’re drunk, I like you mostly.

Terrific!

Sea Song is the only real song on the album, and perhaps the only track which can be separated out and listened to separately. Still, Wyatt’s striking lyrics and guileless vocal serve as a good introduction to the whole record.

Sincerity and Artifice

Most of popular music is about persona and artifice. Sinatra, Madonna, the Rolling Stones, Daddy Yankee: they all project a thing, and we can judge how well they portray that thing. Some of their songs are more successful than others, and we can measure their achievement against their intention.

However, with Wyatt, goals and aims feel irrelevant. Rock Bottom sounds like an expression of himself, without plan or striving. It is him, and those musicians, at that moment. You may not like it, but whether he succeeds or fails is not a valid question. It could not be made better by adding more x, or taking away some y. Rather, he is expressing something. Exploring something.

That lack of intention is most obvious in his singing, where he sounds beautiful, and entirely himself. He is not displaying technique, or skill, but instead what, on some level, he is; and it is impossible not to be moved by that.

The album manages to feel like the contents of someone’s head, while also feeling loose and collaborative. There is jazz, chanting, drones, horns, piano, guest vocals from his wife Alfreda Benge and Ivor Cutler… yet it feels coherent and whole. A strange, off-kilter world, with its own internal logic.

That strangeness is not meant to provoke, or it would be wearying. Wyatt needs it to sound the way it does to express what he wants to express. We are all strange, and all of us have odd thoughts and metaphors, but most of us are too self-conscious to express them. Wyatt has managed to get past that, and whether or not you like the result is unimportant.

So, is it any good?

Of all the albums that had been made up to that point, all of the thousands of records, is it one of the best?

Fuck it — who knows?

Critics listen to so much music that the stuff which is different gets highlighted. A really solid example of a pre-existing form isn’t interesting, though it might be excellent. The nature of canon-formation and “good taste” rewards novelty.

Well-produced collections of good songs, like Rumours, tend to suffer in lists like these, because there’s no currency in liking them (Tusk on the other hand…).

So the question is not, is it any good? The question is, is it better than Rumours?

Is it better than Rumours?

No.

Is it worth a listen?

Oh yeah, though bear in mind I’m a jaded 40 year old on the hunt for fresh kicks

Standout track for the Spotify Playlist:

Sea Song.

Next up: Led Zeppelin IV

Originally published at 100greatestalbumsrevisited.home.blog on December 2, 2018.