MATCHING MOLE

Matching Mole's debut album offers an interesting middle ground between the free-form Canterbury jazz rock of Robert Wyatt's past and the avant-pop of his future, but his talents sadly refuse to shine as well as they could in either respect. Several songs on here such as the mellow, catchy "O Caroline" were already recorded earlier by Wyatt with different formations and appear here in a form that's more refined in terms of composition but also somehow more restrained in their execution and more basic in their production. "Part Of The Dance" is an excellent jazzy jam with cool guitar work by Phil Miller, and I'm intrigued by how the album just breaks down completely into atonal ambience during the final tracks, culminating in the ghostly Mellotron howls of "Immediate Curtain". There's not a bad song on the album really but there are definitely better entry points in Wyatt's long and varied career.