Robert Wyatt Album Reviews

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The End of An Ear (1970)
Matching Mole (1972) by Matching Mole

The End of An Ear (1970)

6

Las Vegas Tango (Part I) / To Mark Everywhere / To Saintly Bridget / To Oz Alien Daevyd and Gilly / To Nick Everyone / To Caravan and Brother Jim / To the Old World (Thank You for the Use of Your Body, Goodbye) / To Carla, Marsha and Caroline (For Making Everything Beautifuller) / Las Vegas Tango (Part I)

Anyone who's familiar with The Soft Machine's early releases will understand the irony of Wyatt referring to himself as "Out of Work Pop Singer" in the sleeve notes to his solo debut The End of an Ear. While they were often lumped in with the most important progressive rock bands of the late 60s and early 70s (Yes, Genesis, King Crimson, etc), The Soft Machine were consistently more "far out" than any of those bands (only KC came close if they tried really, really hard), less concerned with stunning musicianship and intricate compositions, focusing on disorienting and almost alienating ventures into reckless psychedelica, avant-garde and free jazz instead. Even though the Canterbury scene from which they sprung would unleash more musicians (Fred Frith, for instance) that would turn balancing on the thin line between rock, jazz and experiment into an art form itself, The Soft Machine - with their fondness of sound manipulation, "musique concrète" and Dadaist approach - were easily one of the most fearless and uncompromising bands of their era. Some of their material actually sounds as if they had more fun with offending expectations and conventions that playing the music itself. Wyatt, whose value to the band became painfully obvious when The Soft Machine allegedly failed to release another memorable album without him, would eventually turn to more rigidly structured music that you could almost consider a flirtation with pop/rock, yet he'd never revert to mainstream songwriting and musicianship. It's no surprise then, that The End of an Ear is one of the harder to digest debut albums of its period and one that still stands as Wyatt's least conformist album, an extremely personal and self-indulgent statement that doesn't have anything to do with "rock" whatsoever.

The End of an Ear was released shortly after what many consider the quintessential Soft Machine album (the double Third, which ran over an hour and only contained four songs), at a time when Wyatt was still a member of that band. However, the 1992 liner notes reveal that Wyatt would soon be ousted from the band by the very same people he once invited to join. They also mention that the album wasn't his first solo attempt. The first effort was a blues recording in 1968 for which he was helped out by Jimi Hendrix, the second one the extended piece "Moon in June," which would end up on Third. Even though the album features no less than six collaborators - ranging from Caravan organist David Sinclair, Soft Machine's sax player Elton Dean to other mainstays of the scene Mark Charig (cornet), Mark Ellidge (piano), Cyril Ayers (percussion) and Neville Whitehead (bass) - The End of An Ear is very much a solo album, brimming with Wyatt's inventive drumming, keyboard playing and eerie vocalizing. The latter is nowhere more obvious than on his versions of Gil Evans' "Las Vegas Tango," two cacophonous trips that only reveal their secrets if you endure them and are willing to try again and again. And again. Especially the album's opening song gives the middle finger to tradition, with randomly placed piano notes, awkward drums rhythms and, most importantly, the nonsensical gibberish of Wyatt, who turns the track into a radical experiment to manipulate his vocals, layer them and pitch them to create an almost nauseating mess. Depending on your previous experiences, it sounds like the work of a retard, a maniac or a Smurf on acid. It's music that's alternately freaky, creepy and silly, but also a daring adventure and a radical deconstruction. The second version is marginally more digestible, less dominated by the vocals and leaning closer to a less extreme kind of jazz. Underneath the flow of ideas, there remains a steady rhythm that ensures the "free" piano playing won't ruin your listening pleasure. Still, the increasingly dense use of vocals during the second half gives the song a feverishly climax that abruptly ends when the piano performance collapses entirely.

The seven remaining songs are all tributes to friends and relatives (who are explicitly mentioned by name) or something rather vague like "the Old World." With the exception of "To Nick Everyone" (an extended piece of free jazz built around the interplay between sax, piano, percussion and bass) and "To Caravan and Brother Jim" (the album's most accessible track, one with a steady, marching rhythm and some melancholy organ and piano playing by David Sinclair), the tracks are mainly short bits of jazz noodling, some better than others. While the stomping groove that sets off "To Mark Everywhere" already announces "To Caravan," it soon breaks down to become an indulgent sound experiment. "To Saintly Bridget" and "To Oz Alien Daevyd and Gilly" are sonically similar to some of the era's demanding jazz music (the interplay between Dean, Wyatt and Whitehead isn't that far removed from what John Surman, Brian Odges and Tony Oxley were doing on John McLaughlin's Extrapolation a bit earlier), but the result remains too random, lacking a beautiful or intriguing core you'll want to return to. "To the Old World" is downright annoying - some goofballs having fun with quacking sounds, bells and a sax imitating a swarm of buzzing bees - and "To Carla and Caroline" rather forgettable, but a small reward arrives when you reach the second "Last Vegas Tango," which along with the opening song and "To Caravan" is the real meat of the album. All in all, too much of this isn't up to standard, but it remains an intriguing and unique document - the inventive percussion, extensive voice experimentation and complete lack of guitar! - if you're willing to scratch the surface. After The End of an Ear, Wyatt would be a member of short-lived super group Matching Mole, who'd release two albums in the year they existed, and then after a sudden turn of events, Wyatt would steer his career in a slightly altered direction with stunning results. This one, however, remains one for fans of Wyatt, the Canterbury scene and risky experimentalism.

Matching Mole (1972) by Matching Mole

5.5

O Caroline / Instant Pussy / Signed Curtain / Part of the Dance / Instant Kitten / Dedicated to Hugh, But You Weren't Listening / Beer as in Braindeer / Immediate Curtain

Wankathon-alert! In 1971, Wyatt suddenly found himself without a band, but that changed quickly when he formed Matching Mole (a play on the French translation of Soft Machine, "la machine molle") with Canterbury luminaries Phil Miller on guitar, Bill McCormick on bass and Caravan's Dave Sinclair on keys, and started recording in the same year. Even though Matching Mole was a proper band, albeit one that only existed for less than a year, their debut feels very much like a Wyatt solo album. Like The End of An Ear, all musicians seem to serve Wyatt's quirky vision, which is more accessible here, but it results in equally frustrating and uneven results. If there's one redeeming factor here, it's that the leader's goofy humor is much more prominent. Most of the music here is pretty demanding, serious and professional (in that "did you see the trick it took me seven years to learn?"-way), yet the song-titles, Wyatt's onomatopoeic vocals on "Instant Pussy" (a parody of sexual ecstasy?) and "Instant Kitten" and the quirky lyrics on some of the first tracks aren't exactly what you'd expect from a legendary prog/jazz-band. The sentimental opening ballad "O Caroline," a surprisingly simple song featuring mainly piano and mellotron, already ridicules its own sentimentality by referring to the process of making music itself ("David's on the piano and I may play on a drum, and we try to make the music, We'll try try to have some fun") and its effect on the listener ("If you call this sentimental crap you'll make me mad, because you know that I would not sing about some passing fad"), but it's during "Signed Curtain" that Wyatt uses his fragile voice and lyrics to create something sweet, poignant and silly, singing about how he moves from verse to chorus and bridge.

While the album's opening trio of songs isn't bad at all - a simplified, almost childish alternative for The End of An Ear, really - the next batch of songs offers something more challenging and more indebted to Soft Machine's music. While it's not as out there as that band's preceding products, it probably takes a trained listener to fully appreciate this merger of progressive rock, jazz-tinged rhythms and psychedelia. Miller's only contribution - "Part of the Dance" - is likely to be the most substantial song here, a cool sounding jam-based piece that starts off quietly and sways back and forth until Miller announces the true launching that involves intricate drum parts, jazzy guitar scrabbling and jerky organ accents. The more fusion-based "Instant Kitten" starts with Wyatt's meaningless vocals, but soon transcends into a fine showcase for Miler's talents. However, when the last third part of the song is taken up by some melancholy mellotron, you'll realize that there's nothing much to get here besides the adequate musicianship: the song misses a strong theme or a unifying core, making it only interesting for prog fanatics. From that point onwards, the band doesn't get out of the downward spiral again, as near-complete arbitrariness takes over: "Dedicated to Hugh, But You Weren't Listening" is a funny title but a pointless jam, "Beer as in Braindeer" revels in its own superfluity (musique concrete, maaaaaan) and "Immediate Curtain" is a throwaway mellotron dirge. While its best moments are often considered to be prime examples of the "Canterbury-style," there's way too much filler here to lift Matching Mole above the level of the average side-project. (I haven't heard their second album Little Red Record, also released in 1972, but it's supposed to be less interesting than this release).