I love Rock Bottom to bits and it's in my top 5 albums of all time. I'm still utterly enthralled every time I give it a listen and it's one of the few albums I'd say is truly perfect. I can't pinpoint what makes Rock Bottom so great and I really don't think I can do it justice. It is well-known that it was released after Robert Wyatt fell from a fourth floor window and became paralysed from the waist down. Perhaps it was this unique set of circumstances which rendered Rock Bottom a masterpiece? There's certainly no other recording I've heard which possesses the same eerie, plaintive, watery atmosphere. It goes from dreamy to intense to childlike to plain bizarre.
The first two tracks are somewhat conventional, especially in comparison to what follows. But it's all relative really because Wyatt's interspersed piano throughout Sea Song and scat singing in A Last Straw are off-kilter to say the least, yet it all feels oh so right. Little Red Riding Hood Hit the Road is where the album starts to become a bit more abstract as it packs on layer upon layer of trumpets. Through the dreamy waves of sound, a strangely compelling backbeat ultimately gives it direction and purpose.
The Alifib/Alife medley is fantastic. Alifib is so delicately composed and Wyatt manages to sound completely ingenuous even when he's babbling his fragile gibberish... here, he could lull a rhino to sleep. Things becomes slightly more manic as it segues into Alife with its raucous and almost griefstricken sax set over mesmerizing organ chords. This is a portrait of Wyatt in desperation as he utters the same lyrics from Alifib but in a more agitated and demented manner. Little Red Robin Hood Hit the Road features some gorgeously intoxicating leads from Mike Oldfield. The song (and album) end on a rather odd note with Ivor Cutler, in a Scottish/Jamaican accent, reciting a seemingly nonsensical poem with a harmonium/viola backing.
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