A very short one now, possibly I shouldn't even count it. Is it an EP or an album?
This is a 1989 CD release of Robert Wyatt's sessions for John Peel in September 1974, which I picked up for a pittance at a boot fair.
Recorded just a couple of months after Rock Bottom was released, it consists of only four tracks, all very much solo performances, just Wyatt, keyboards and the production skills of John Walters. There's a certain naïve charm to the whole session, even if none of the songs here really match up to their more polished studio versions.
Soup Song, which would later appear on Wyatt's 1975 album Ruth Is Stranger Than Richard, is an almost throwaway bluesy little ditty, followed by Alifib, a child-like love song to his wife, Alfie, probably the song which best translates to this minimal arrangement. The hit single (no 29 in 1974), a cover of Neil Diamond's I'm A Believer, is a pleasant enough rendering, but lack the little flourishes which make the single version compelling, and the final track is Sea Song, again, still a lovely song, but gaining nothing over the album version by the stripped down arrangement.
This is a nice little document of a moment in time, and possibly an incite into how the songs sound in Wyatt's head, but there are other versions of all four songs I'd choose over these.
3* - a good listen, but probably more for Wyatt completists
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