Palestine's A Country

The Unthanks
The Songs of Robert Wyatt and Antony & the Johnsons, Live from the Union Chapel (Diversions Vol. 1) (2011)

This is more or less the same set as when we saw the Unthanks before Christmas. So maybe just read my review of that. One problem with this kind of live album is that you get a sense of how the band tell the same anecdotes every time they play a particular song, revealing the artifice of the performance process. Listening to this again, I still prefer the Wyatt tunes to those by Mr Antony. I am not sure if this is racism on my part or just an ear for superior songwriting.

Ruth is stranger than Panda

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That "lady" is my mother!

Record reviews – they are a bit boring, aren't they?* But if I throw out a load of reviews of records I have semi-listened to it is a great way of generating Inuit Panda posts for the next number of days. So let's go.

Robert Wyatt
Rock Bottom (1974)

Tower are doing these nice limited edition reissues of Robert Wyatt albums on vinyl that come with a little CD version of the thing – ideal for people like me who are plagued by format indecision. This is my first album by the former Soft Machine star, and it was also his first solo album, recorded not too long after the accident that made him wheelchair bound. There is a lovely quality to Wyatt's voice – a kind of weedy yet strong character – that goes well with his odd songwriting. Some of this sounds very strange indeed, but the opener ('Sea Song') is a charmingly affecting love song that might well actually be about Wyatt's lovely wife.

Rock Panda

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*Reader's Voice: "The way you write them, yes".

The Unthanks salute the magic of Robert Wyatt and Antony & the Johnsons

You may have heard of The Unthanks. They are Becky and Rachel Unthank and some musicians from an English region who made their names singing local folk tunes. They came to Dublin recently, not to sing their usual repertoire but to treat us to covers of songs by Antony & The Johnsons and Robert Wyatt. I went along. Because the helpful people who run Whelans gave the door opening time on the ticket, but not the concert start time, I missed the first number of songs. This turned out not matter too much as they began with the Mr Antony tunes, and I have adopted an anti-Antony position for no good reason other than a dislike of bald people. However, as I am not that familiar with the music of either Mr Antony or Robert Wyatt, for all that I officially wuv Mr Wyatt, it took me some time to realise that I had not missed the good stuff. And in fairness, the Mr Antony tunes I heard did not sound that dreadful, so maybe I should re-evaluate my animus towards that hipster-friendly artist.

The Robert Wyatt set was notable for the non-inclusion of any of the covers that for me are the most notable tunes by that man. So there was no 'Shipbuilding', 'Biko', or 'Stalin Wasn't Stalling'. But they did play 'Dondestan', which features the wonderful lyrics "Palestine's a country / or at least it used to be / Fellahin, refugee / Kurdistan similarly". To this the Unthank sisters added in a bit of clog dancing. Their performance of 'Sea Song' (an odd Robert Wyatt love song) was then rather affecting.

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