Robert Wyatt 'Different Every Time' - Album Review

Named after the just-released biography of the same title, Different Every Time is a career-spanning collection from British jazz-rock legend Robert Wyatt, with one album providing an overview of the bearded one’s legacy and the other a beguiling compilation of collaborations.
CD1, entitled Ex Machina, covers his better known output, beginning with seminal rock/jazz/prog outfit Soft Machine, through his Matching Mole moniker (a pun on the French for Soft Machine, Machine Molle) and on to his series of solo albums. It opens with Soft Machine’s ‘Moon In June’ – at 19 minutes and 11 seconds, this is epic in the true sense of the word. Even for those familiar with its weird time changes, odd noises and bizarre flirtations with free jazz, folk, rock and whatever you’re having yourself, guvnor, it is without doubt one of the oddest songs you are ever likely to set ears on – yet it’s strangely compelling.
Elsewhere, there’s the arch irony of ‘Signed Curtain’, the Bristol prog of ‘Team Spirit’, the soaring ‘At Last I Am Free’ and the accessible, for him, ‘Yesterday Man’. The live take on ‘A Last Straw’ has Wyatt using his voice as another instrument in the mix, performing an oral impression of a guitar solo to rather alarming effect, which contrasts with the delicate piano and vocals of ‘Worship’ and the gorgeous sentimentality of ‘Just As You Are’.
For Wyatt fans, the second disc of duets and guest appearances, Benign Dictatorships, is far more interesting. Highlights include the delightful drone with Hot Chip on ‘We’re Looking For A Lot Of Love’, the beautifully haunting ‘Richardson Road’ and the brass-inflected ‘Things Turn Upside Down’. ‘Siam’, his work with Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason, sounds like Syd Barrett-era Floyd, while the Bjork collaboration ‘Submarine’ is typically intense, a hypnotic fugue of voices and samples that digs its way under your skin. Pick of the bunch, however, is the incredible ‘Shipbuilding’, with Wyatt’s fragile voice the perfect conduit for Elvis Costello’s aching Falklands War polemic.
Different Every Time is both a decent introduction to Wyatt’s work and a weird and often wonderful collection of rarities.