Tired of Wyatting? Drag City’s prison bitch Domino Recording Company is scheduled to release the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Comicopera – his first solo effort since 2003’s Cuckooland – as early as the 24th of next month. Regarding the weird-even-for-him title, Wyatt had this to say:
“Greeks divided things into Comedy and Tragedy, and Comedy didn’t mean funny, it meant just, ‘about human foibles,’ as opposed to Tragedy which is about Gods and Destiny. So this is about human foibles. I want to emphasise that…I’m talking about human foibles, I’m not looking for new Gods.”
The most progressive wheelchair-bound invalid since FDR, Wyatt stays true to Stradella‘s form nonetheless (minus the happy ending and all) by dividing the album’s 16 tracks into three separate acts:
Act I – Lost in Noise
1. “Stay Tunes”
2. “Just As You Are”
3. “You You”
4. “A.W.O.L.”
5. “Anachronist”
Act II – The Here and There
1. “A Beautiful Place”
2. “Be Serious”
3. “On the Town Square”
4. “Mob Rule”
5. “A Beautiful War”
6. “Out of the Blue”
Act III – Away With the Fairies
1. “Del Mondo”
2. “Cancion de Julieta”
3. “Pastafari”
4. “Fragment”
5. “Hasta Siempre”
All the usual suspects are back for this one as well – The Jam’s Paul Weller, Phil Manzanera of Roxy Music fame and of course, the inimitable Brian Eno – and in the third act alone the always voracious Wyatt manages to hit on pretty much everything in the Latino section of Barnes & Noble (e.g. Federico GarcÃa Lorca, Che Guevara, Carlos Puebla). Did I mention that the last act is in Spanish? I just hope it’s more successful than that whole Esperanto movement a while back. Comicopera will be the first new stuff I’ve heard from the Father Christmas stand-in since that track he did with Eno last year about those flies that saved the Jews. Oye como va…bueno pa’gozar!