Rock Bottom
Customer Review: Jesus christ, this is beautiful!
The best thing about Wyatt's albums is that it sounds very simple on the outside, but if you delve in deeper, it sounds very structured and complicated. His lyrics (and wonderful cracked voice) potray a sadness, but always however with a faint ray of hope.
The album never decides to stay on a particular vein for very long, as you least expect it an outburst of free jazzy trumpets come out, and Wyatt melancholicly fights his way through them.
I won't go into the history behind the album as you can most probably (such as him being on a wheelchair, and part of the album centred on Venice) find it on other more detailed or even better reviews!
I'm just giving a personal account on why Rock bottom has had such a great impact on me recently.
Customer Review: One of the albums I play most often….
As the liner-notes from Wyatt demonstrate, this album has a history- initially composed in Venice as his lover Alfie and “a bunch of friends” worked on the film ‘Don’t Look Now’ on a “very basic little keyboard”, this album’s creation was interrupted (& later encouraged) by Wyatt’s accident which broke his spine and left him in a wheelchair. That most of ‘Rock Bottom’ was composed prior to the accident skews the idea that it was all a reaction to that event- Wyatt speaks of “a new kind of freedom” it gave him- which accounts more for the emphasis on keyboards (drones and songs)& a rolling-cast of guest-players including Ivor Cutler, Hugh Hopper & Mike Oldfield (some of the chosen instruments are equally obscure- a small battery, Delfina’s tray, Delfina’s wineglass, James’ drum…).
Produced by Pink Floyd’s Nick Mason, ‘Rock Bottom’ collides psychedelia with more ambient-jazz (think Alice Coltrane, or Miles’ albums like ‘Big Fun’ or ‘In a Silent Way’). ‘Sea Song’ is the melancholy-opening track, Wyatt’s droning keyboards suggest the acquatic elements found in the lyric, as Wyatt looks at a protean kind of love, “…You look different every time you come from the foam crested brine/Your skin shining softly in the moonlight/Partly-fish, partly-porpoise, partly baby-sperm-whale…” but things seem more ominous with lines like, “Joking apart, when you’re drunk- you’re terrific/When you’re drunk I like you mostly late at night, you’re quite alright/But I can’t understand the different you in the morning when it’s time to play at being human for a while…” or “You’ll be different in the spring, I know/You’re a seasonal beast, like the starfish that drifts with the tide/So until you’re blood runs to meet the next full moon/Your madness fits in nicely with my own/Your lunacy fits neatly with my own…” The conclusion of the song flips from jazzy-atonal-piano-stabs (think ‘Aladdin Sane’ or ‘Death of a Disco Dancer’), Wyatt’s moans, a choir of drones & a semi-classical feel that makes me think of Messiaen & Nyman. ‘Sea Song’ defines the album- one that drags you into its own world completely - one of those albums like Associates’ ‘Sulk’, AR Kane’s ‘69′, My Bloody Valentine’s ‘Loveless’, Talk Talk’ ‘Spirit of Eden’ & Cocteau Twins’ ‘Treasure.’
‘A Last Straw’ sounds like a collision of post-Syd/pre-’Dark Side’-Floyd & Soft Machine (circa II)- a loose psych-jazzy track with Wyatt playing guitar (& sometimes imitating one) that continues the focus on uterine-imagery (…”Seaweed tangled in our home from home, reminds me of your rocky-bottom…Into the water we’ll go, head over heel…”). 1974, a Merman Robert shall be! The guitar is hypnotic, reminding me of a looser ‘Drive Blind’ by Ride & having the same feel as Pink Floyd’s ‘Echoes.’ The songs just flow- there are six and there are many- ‘Little Red Riding Hood Hit the Road’ opens with some trumpet from Mongezi Feza, as a strange-loop of drones/voices clutters along (contrast to MBV’s ‘Loomer’)- the voices trying to break though (Ivor Cutler’s voice not quite fully present- coming to on the final track/sequel). The song builds on some gorgeous piano/keyboards (as great as Wyatt’s contribution to the timeless ‘The Sweetest Girl’ by Scritti Politti) as he drifts between meaning & nonsense (”Orlandon’t tell me…”). The refrain “I know, I know…” really hits home here as the maelstrom has some order put to it- a track that just never bores me (& it even has the word “blimey” in it!).
‘Alifib’, and its succesor ‘Alife’ are very much the centre of the album, Wyatt whirlpooling off into ‘Jabberwocky’-territory (Lear crashing into The Goons as a copy of ‘Finnegans Wake’ falls apart in the water…)- “No nit not/Nit nit folly bololey/Alife my larder…Burlybunch the watermole/Hellyplop the fingerhole/Not a wossit, bundy, see/For jangle and bojangle/trip trip pip pippy pippy pip pip…” As PIL noted on ‘Death Disco’, “words cannot express”, and like the oblique lyric to Van Morrison’s ‘Astral Weeks’, the drift toward nonsense, or words that sound both like & unlike words makes sense here. File alongside Cocteau Twins & Sigur Ros: I DARE YOU!!!
‘Little Red Robin Hood Hit the Road’ sounds like the end (it’s a very complete sounding album), “In the garden of England, dead-moles lie inside their holes/The dead-end tunnels crumble in the rain, underfoot/Innit a shame?”- as Mike Oldfield delivers a mindblowing guitar-solo, Wyatt coming out of that almost chanting, “Can’t you see them? Roots can’t hold them/Bugs console them…” The song lapses into meltdown, reminding me of Can’s epic ‘Halleluwah’, as Ivor Cutler steps in with his baritone concertina & his voice, that sounds like a Scot skanking!
‘Rock Bottom’ sounds like nothing else really and remains one of the albums I listen to the most & if anyone wants a definition of love, beyond some of the lyrics, the photo of Alfie & Robert on the inner-sleeve by Pennie Smith appears to be just that:”…and we lived happily ever after.” Fans of this record may also enjoy the alternate-versions found on the compilation ‘Solar Flares Burn For You.’
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