Nothing Can Stop Us

Excellent vynil and CD edition.

A 1986 release of political torch and protest songs. "Shipbuilding" was released as a single and it remains a great working class song. "At last I am Free" sung in Mr Wyatt's unique nasal dirge is a powerful song. It has a bleak and touching cover of "Strange Fruit" made famous by Billie Holiday. "Red Flag" and "Trade Union" are reminders of how much we are losing to the era of casual labour. It ends with the dirge like poem of Stalingrad, but listen to the words, it reflected the hopes of a generation before Stalin ripped the heart out of the labour movement. Not recommended for those of a conservative bent.

Wyatt was a peripheral interest for me, mostly post 'Soft Machine', with 'Matching Mole', 'Rock Bottom' & 'Ruth is Stranger Than Fiction'. The cover art on these unpretentious albums unobstrusively indicated a subtle sensibility. Though each of these outings has its merits, and Wyatt's continuing catalogue has given me sporadic joys, 'Nothing Can Stop Us Now' has been my absolute, compulsive favourite.Yes, even its avowed anarchism is not prosyletizing.(The cover notes inform us from some quip from a Yankee breast-beater in the 1930s, that the USA will not make the British mistake of trying to impose its order on the world, but merely own it..'nothing can stop us now'). Though this disc was assembled from singles, the sum of the parts make an eclectic satisfying whole.'Shipbuilding', author Costello in tow, receives its definitive reading. Awesome at the time of the Faulkland's fiasco, it has lost none of its clout. Peter Blackman's eloquent narration of his'Stalingrad' is moving. 'Strange Fruit' is delivered with such unnerving, piercing force, the image rides before my eyes with subdued horror.'At Last I am Free,' is sung with appropriate liberation, Wyatt's quivering voice, aching into melancholy. And 'Trade Union' with an ensemble called Disharhi adding to the universality of Wyatt's worker's ethic, uniting his sympathies with other ethnicities. It's brave stuff, stirring stuff, and though I'm not even a card-holding member of a political club, I hold a candle for Wyatt's music.

If you're new to Robert Wyatt, don't start here. This uneven collection of singles for Rought Trade in the early 1980s has a few gems and a lot of chaff. My favorite, "At Last I Am Free," makes me cry just thinking about it. I have the LP just to play that song. "Born Again Cretin" has the trademark Wyatt whimsy and "Stalin Wasn't Stallin'" is one of the tastier servings of the old Commie's anachronistic politics. Most of the rest are forgettable. But, like all Wyatt releases, even the less successful numbers have his twinkling sincerity ("Caimanera," for example).