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Album
Ruth Is Stranger Than Richard
Robert Wyatt →13,211 listeners148,705 plays
progressive rockcanterbury scene1975psychedelic rockcanterbury
about this album
Ruth Is Stranger Than Richard is the third solo album by Robert Wyatt. The follow-up to Rock Bottom, for which Wyatt had written all of the music and lyrics, Ruth... consisted of Wyatt's adaptations and arrangements of other people's music (either friends - Phil Manzanera, Fred Frith, Mongezi Feza, former Wilde Flowers bandmate Brian Hopper - or influences - Charlie Haden) with Wyatt adding his own lyrics in much the same way as he'd done on Matching Mole's Little Red Record. Apart from "Sonia", recorded for the aborted "Yesterday Man" single in October 1974 (again with Nick Mason as producer), Ruth was made at Virgin's Manor Studios with Wyatt himself handling production duties. Much of the album features Wyatt backed by a "band" consisting of Bill MacCormick, Laurie Allan, Mongezi Feza, Nisar Ahmed Kahn and Gary Windo, with Brian Eno adding his own idiosyncratic "anti-jazz" touch. The album contains several pieces which recall the complexity and despair of Rock Bottom, but much of the record echoes the relaxed, almost silly feel of earlier Wyatt efforts such as The End of an Ear or his work with Matching Mole. This becomes evident from the choice of title (a pun on "truth is stranger than fiction") onwards; the two sides of the original LP release were not labeled "Side A" and "Side B", but rather "Side Richard" and "Side Ruth", the implication being that Side B was less outlandish than Side A. True to his word, Wyatt punctuated the three "serious" pieces on Side Richard
