ROCK BOTTOM

The new edition's cover image of "Rock Bottom" speaks for itself: this record is so deep and introspective that you can really dive into it. Lovely, agressive, delicate, harsh, gentle, cruel, tender and utterly confusing as it is, the album has its own kind of accesibility: maybe it's the toy keyboard sound that bewitches "Sea Song", the jazzy sway that runs through all the songs, the trembling vocals. Almost sounds like a cry for help, or a confession, in a way that could remind Brian Wilson's "Smile"- era songs. Personal circumstances left apart, you could call it "the sound of a man on the verge of losing all kind of control over his life". Wilson lost. Wyatt, fortunately for all of us, won. And them both left impressive accounts of their struggle.