December 13, 2007
With a bit of help from some old friends (including Brian Eno and Phil Manzanera) and a few new ones (Paul Weller), Robert Wyatt has produced what's possibly his most heartbreaking album to date: no easy feat, considering the many bittersweet gems strewn throughout his 40-year career.
While Comicopera has more in common aurally with jazz or occasionally folk than with opera, the album is presented in three actsthe first dealing with love and loss, the second with understanding modern life in the Western world, the third with Wyatt turning his eye to the rest of society, the scope becoming more and more distant through each act. Wyatt manages to present these themes with sophisticated touches of honesty, irony, eeriness and wit. Comicopera is an earnest, heartfelt statement from a man, now at the age of 62, still trying to find his place in the universe.
