Album Review: Robert Wyatt - His Greatest Misses
- Written by Kenneth McMurtrie
Having re-released upwards of half a dozen of Robert Wyatt's solo studio and live albums over the last few years, Domino have now got around to introducing His Greatest Misses (previously a Japan-only sampler of his post-Matching Mole career) to a wider audience. Is it though a worthy introduction to the years 1974 onwards?
Seemingly reasonably priced and containing over an hour of music and 17 songs, the value for money aspect is practically a given. The tracks are not ordered chronologically but, as Wyatt's hardly the sort of artist with whom any "progression" of style or arrangement can really be registered (given both the variety of his work from Soft Machine onwards and the whimsical nature of his muse), more often than not a song from one year fits so well with one from years later that a continuity is established.
The disc's title is a slight misnomer inasmuch as his version of 'I'm A Believer' (The Monkees Neil Diamond-penned 1966 hit) just made it into the UK Top 30 in 1975 and the cover of Elvis Costello's 'Shipbuilding' managed a Top 40 placing in 1982, but those that made it onto 7" both between ('Arauco' and 'At Last I Am Free') and after that pair ('The Age Of Self', 'Free Will and Testament' and 'Heaps Of Sheeps') all failed to achieve even those modest heights.
The fact that the record buying public of 1980 didn't go a bundle for the Kent-inflected Spanish of 'Arauco' is maybe no great surprise and it is equally doubtful that the lack of sales of 'The Age Of Self' was due to that song's anti-consumerism message being a massive subliminal success; yet the latter backs its clear political sentiments with a distinctly pop melody that in its own way is rather timeless but by no means an attempt to jump on any then current bandwagon. Throughout this record Wyatt's admirable singularity shines through.
Which is all well and good, but why should anyone actually be interested in listening to these songs afresh in this day and age? At the time of their inception, did they push any envelopes and, even if they did, are those same envelopes still open or have they, in the intervening decades, been turned inside out by other musicians, or even ceased to exist? Generally the answer to the first question is probably not – if you're going to "discover" Robert Wyatt it's not going to be via this disc. The answer to question b, part a is again a negative but that in itself isn't bad – who has honestly discovered Blues through the works of The White Stripes? Question b, part b doesn't matter – Robert Wyatt and his body of work still exist. "And although we like our longer tunes, it seemed polite to cut them down".