Album title:Ruth Is Stranger Than Richard
Artiste: Robert Wyatt
Genre: Porgressive Rock
Year: 1975
Label: Virgin
Producer: Robert Wyatt
Chronological position: Third album
Notes:
Album chart position: n/a
Singles: n/a
Lineup: Robert Wyatt– vocals, piano, imitation electric piano (Ri4), organ (Ri2), drums (Ru2, Ri2)
Brian Eno– guitar (Ri4),synthesizer(Ri4), direct inject anti-jazz ray gun (Ru3)
Gary Windo–bass clarinet(Ri2, Ru2),tenor saxophone(Ri4, Ru1, Ru3, Ru4),alto saxophone(Ri4, Ru2, Ru4)
Nisar Ahmad "George" Khan– tenor saxophone (Ri4, Ru4),baritone saxophone(Ru1, Ru4)
Mongezi Feza–trumpet(Ru2)
Fred Frith– piano (Ri1, Ri3, Ri5)
Bill MacCormick– bass guitar (Ri2, Ri4, Ru1, Ru3, Ru4)
John Greaves– bass guitar (Ru2)
Laurie Allan– drums (Ri4, Ru1, Ru3, Ru4)
For his third solo album, Wyatt chose to interpret songs written by his friends, or people he had been influenced by. There's a mention of “a return to the style of
The End of an Ear”, which is not good news for me, but to be fair, I haven't really liked anything I've heard from this guy so far, so it's probably not going to make all that much of a difference.
Review begins
A bright but slow piano accompanies a falsetto vocal which varies between childish (as in, it sounds like a child singing) and annoying, but lasts less than a minute, then some nice sax takes in “Solar flares”, and I realise that for some reason Spotify seems to have transposed side one and side two of the album, but I'm just going to go with the way it comes at me, so I guess we're doing side two first. Seems oddly appropriate, given what I've heard so far about the guy. This is actually quite a nice lounge style instrumental, like something you would hear playing in the background of a bar or something. Oh, okay: it's not instrumental; there are some vocals coming in now, it's just it was only music for so long I assumed it was. Kind of a crooning effect to the singing. Nice. The short opener (as it were) was called “Muddy mouse (a)”, and now we have another, equally silly one called “Muddy mouse(b)” then a rather nice arrangement of Offenbach's
Barcarolle under the title “5 black notes and 1 white note”, on piano and horn. Very stately and grand, and mournful. We then end on one more “Muddy mouse”, this one being also subtitled, “(c) (Which in turn leads to Muddy mouth”) - um, yeah – and is far longer at over six minutes, in fact the longest piece on the entire album, bar one. It actually develops into quite a nice piano ballad with normal vocals. Very nice.
What should then be side one, but according to Spotify ends up as side two, opens with “Soup song”, a breezy, cheerful upbeat song with elements of jazz and some really cool piano. “Sonia” is pretty funky, a real shuffle with a super-addictive bassline and some nice horns (ooer!) while “Team spirit” is the longest song on the album, just shy of nine minutes, probably the most progressive rock sounding on an album which Wiki purports to be prog rock but I don't really see for most of it. The horns on this get a little wild, but it's not bad, and the album, according to Spotify, ends on Charlie Haden's “Song for Che”, which kind of works better as a closer, in my opinion, than the original arrangement of the album.
Track listing and Ratings (As arranged by Spotify and as I heard them)
Muddy mouse (a)
Solar flares
Muddy mouse (b)
5 black notes and 1 white note
Muddy mouse (c) (Which leads to muddy mouth)
Soup song
Sonia
Team spirit
Song for Che
Afterword: I guess I have to admit, the more I hear of Wyatt the better his albums get. I still would not be a fan, but this is the best yet.
Rating: 