The FADER Magazine Issue 49 October/November 2007

The Maverick Returns
Robert Wyatt gets operatic 

Robert Wyatt has breathed life into his daydreams for decades. He spearheaded the influential Canterbury scene in the 1960s, serving as wily drummer slash vocalist for jazz-fusion pioneers Soft Machine, until a fall from a third story window during a party left the bearded trailblazer paralyzed from the waist down. As a result, Wyatt lost his ability to slap skins, but most certainly not the ginger ale-like texture of his singing voice. Those legendary vocal cords have been featured prominently in his solo work since, and Wyatt continues to churn out off-kilter pop experiments rife with the free-form jazz wanderings he fell in love with as a youth.

His latest tunes have fallen into a scheme much grander: Comicopera, is an opera suite of three distinct acts, the third of which includes vocal gymnastics in Spanish and Italian. “I could see someone saying, ‘That’s very pretentious.’ And I would think, ‘Well fuck off! I’m just doing the best I can,’ says Wyatt. “I’ve only called it Comicopera, which I think indicates that I don’t think I’m Wagner making grand statements about humanity.”

Though Comicopera’s structure is grandiose in scope, its songs maintain an ingredient Wyatt has always laced throughout his work: whimsy. The album marks Wyatt’s return to work, an affair that didn’t require the (often requisite) prodding of his wife Alfie, nor does it showcase the sort of retrospective folly with which so many other aging artists seem to grapple. “In terms of my input I don’t feel inside that I’ve changed at all. I don’t know whether that means I’m retarded. Certainly I listen to the same records I listened to when I was 18, so I think signs are bad.”