Robert Wyatt Talks About His Forthcoming Album “Comicopera”

“Writing songs doesn’t come easily to me. Some people like Elvis Costello are right on it, these guys are natural songwriters, but I still feel like an intruder into someone else’s craft. I’ve always got loads of fragments of tunes, fragments and words and things I want to say, but bringing them all together into coherent little things called songs is another matter entirely.”

Robert Wyatt doesn’t churn out albums like other artists. In fact, it’s been four years since the release of his last long player, Cuckooland, whose inclusion on the Mercury Prize shortlist brought him to the attention of a wider and possibly younger audience. “Yeah, that was a bit of a surprise, but I was grateful to be nominated. I didn’t really know what it was to be honest, but I got to go to London, have a free meal at a big table and see some music. It was a really good night out.”

Now perennial indie champions Domino, home to the likes of Franz Ferdinand and Arctic Monkeys, are set to release Comicopera, Wyatt’s multi-lingual socio-political drama in three parts. It’s also one of the best records of the year so far.

“This album is an opera in the sense that it’s full of different characters,” explains the extremely affable Wyatt. “It’s not a grand opera of course, because I don’t have the technical skills to write grand opera . . . and I’m not grand.”

Despite Wyatt’s typically modest protestations, this album is full of clever thematic devices dealing with a vast range of issues, both political and personal. For instance, the concluding part of the opera (“Away With The Fairies”) is sung exclusively in Spanish and Italian and constitutes a definite statement of Wyatt’s disillusionment with Britain’s decidedly one sided “special relationship” with the United States and their joint jaunts around the globe.

“There’s a sense that I can just about get along with Englishness, but then when you link it up to the wider English-speaking world that’s when it gets to me. We are still doing that old Empire thing of going around the world, wagging our finger and trying to sort out Johnny Foreigner. But what exactly do we think our moral authority is based upon? I mean the United States is a wonderful place, but it’s founded upon the extermination of the indigenous population of an entire continent, plus slavery and the death penalty. It’s not a country whose foundation makes me think that they have all the answers.”

But Wyatt remains realistic about the potential world changing properties of his creations. “It’s not like I think I can make any difference, but if I am writing songs they need words and these are some of the things that are going on in my head, so they are going to come out in the tunes one way or another.”

Aside from the weighty matter of western imperialism, Comicopera also turns its attention to the minutiae of everyday life and Wyatt’s own relationship with England, such as the spoken word section that precedes “A Beautiful Peace” where Wyatt witnesses a litter of squashed rabbits whilst taking a country walk somewhere in rural Albion.

“English walks are meant to be such wonderfully idyllic things, but I find them quite boring actually,” grumbles Wyatt. “Often what you see in our green and pleasant land is lots of squashed dead rabbits and thrown away food packets with chips spilling out of them, stuff like that. When people talk about country walks they seem to phase out reality, glorifying nature by looking at it through rose-tinted spectacles, but on the album I am simply saying that the reality of what I am seeing while I trudge along the road is this. It’s just a bit of reality.”

While Cuckooland bombarded the listener with its dizzying overload of musical information, Comicopera sees Wyatt strip things back, highlighting its rich melodies and complex themes with minimum fuss. The tender fragility of songs like “You You” and “A Beautiful War” would not have seemed out of place had they appeared on 1974’s magnificent Rock Bottom.

This pairing back was born of a new inclusive approach to song-writing that saw him work in greater conjunction with his collaborators, who this time around included Paul Weller, Brian Eno, vibraphonist Orphy Robinson, trombonist Annie Whitehead and, as ever, his wife Alfie Benge. “For the new album I worked more closely with the band in building up the tracks, rather than doing my usual thing of working stuff up on my own on the keyboard. I had to be much clearer, more specific and decisive about what I wanted the group to play,” explains Wyatt. “I wanted a leaner sound, one where you could actually hear the presence of the people playing the instruments.”

Wyatt’s creations are inherently personal artefacts; tiny bits of himself set to music and offered up for public consumption. It is small wonder that a self-confessed perfectionist with an acute eye for detail, who is essentially so private and even a little shy, is prepared to spend that little bit longer and extra effort on getting right the wonderful records with which he continues to gift us. “An album can’t be like flicking through a magazine”, he says. “It has to be a sustained thing, a specific state of mind and I’m the only one who can and must know what that should sound like.”

So, what does Robert Wyatt have planned for the near future? Will he begin work right away on another album, perhaps? Maybe he will change recent habits and put in the ground work for a gruelling touring schedule? No, it seems, nothing like that. “While I am working on a record I’m very blinkered, just concentrating on making sure that I get what I have to do right. But now I would very much like to take a break, read a few books and spend more time with the missus.

We’ve got some life to have at home, so we’re just going to take it easy for a bit. But I never plan ahead, so I don’t know what I am really going to do next,” a cheeky smile spreads across Wyatt’s bearded face. “I haven’t even decided if I want to do this for a living yet.”

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