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There are days (especially when it’s drizzly) when I think British art-rock godfather Robert Wyatt’s version of Elvis Costello’s “Shipbuilding,” where a shipyard laborer reassesses his livelihood in the face of his hard work being used for wartime purposes, at least according to loose talk around town, first released as a single on Rough Trade in 1982 and later collected on the essential Nothing Can Stop Us, is the most haunting song ever recorded. On a musical level, Wyatt’s mournful reading of Costello’s last truly great song is pure comfort food, as near a traditional (if tweaked) “beautiful” ballad as he got, from the wracked cocktail bridge to his sprained-heart performance. But the songs comes with an uncomfortable socio-political aftertaste, thanks to its core moral ambiguity. (Despite its rep as a readily acknowledged anti-war song, it doesn’t offer many hard-and-fast answers to the still-relevant, underlying question of how much one should/can ignore the wider social/political/environmental effects of their daily grind in order to stay financially afloat, whether there’s a war on or not.) The ingratiating sonics of “Shipbuilding” offer a certain kind of solace; listen past the surface pleasures of Wyatt’s voice, however, and you may walk away feeling gently indicted 26 years later. [YouTube]
Robert Wyatt Needs A Bigger Boat
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Suede doing same:
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Thanks, Jess. He’s one of my favorite singers.
umm, really, i’d say blood and chocolate is full of great songs, and “tramp the dirt down” on spike is a fine war themed tune.
“Peace in Our Time” is also a great song-I remember seeing this performance-I think it was from “The Tonight Show”….
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I might have to re-evaluated “Goodbye Cruel World”!
@Jupiter8: you really don’t have to re-evaluate Goodbye Cruel World, honest.
also, I think Robert Wyatt might have the highest hit rate of any covers artist. has he ever recorded a bad version of anything?
Woah woah woah. “I Want You”?
“Costello’s last truly great song”? Don’t make me come over there.
robert wyatt is such a phenomenal talent. i love everything i know of him from soft machine up til now.
good choice.
Hate to join the choir, but I will anyway. Most of “King of America” and “Blood and Chocolate,” and about half of “Spike,” consist of truly great songs. That said, Wyatt’s immortal rendition trumps Costello’s, and is easily the best cover of any Costello composition (and no, I’m not forgetting Dave Edmunds’ “Girls Talk” or Roy Orbison’s “The Comedians”).
There are so many clauses in that opening sentence that I expected it to be punctuated with a couple “Whereas…”