#346: Robert Wyatt - Rock Bottom (1974)

Zack: Rock Bottom is a sort of weird album, but not in that particular brand of weird that has made quite a few albums we’ve listened to borderline unbearable. What makes Rock Bottom so weird, at least to me, if that I could totally see how this album would blow someone’s mind. I’m just not that person. I listened to the entire album from a third-person perspective, totally aloof, but aware that there are probably people who felt like their entire worlds were opened before them in the same ways that guys like Hendrix, Cash, Pink Floyd, and Kanye (not going to apologize for slipping that in) have done for me. But I just couldn’t really climb inside of it the way this album really demands if enjoying it is the goal.

Favorite Tracks: Little Red Robin Hood Hit the Road; Little Red Riding Hood Hit the Road; Sea Song

Emily: I thought that an album called Rock Bottom would've been creepier, or at least more fitting for that episode of Spongebob where our favorite anthropomorphic sponge hero gets stuck on a bus in the abandoned underwater town of Rock Bottom. Unfortunately, Robert Wyatt's album was neither of those things. Instead, Rock Bottom was an experimental progressive-rock album that took neither the experimentation nor the progressiveness that far. The result is an album that wasn't unpleasant to listen to, like others of the genre, but also that wasn't all that interesting.
Favorite Tracks: Little Red Riding Hood Hit the Road; Little Red Robin Hood Hit the Road; A Last Straw