Consumer Guide Album

Robert Wyatt: Nothing Can Stop Us [Rough Trade, 1982]
In which the CPUK turns the unwary art-rocker into Pete Seeger. Long convinced that there's no percentage in soft-soaping the masses, Wyatt is more candidly propagandistic than, say, the Weavers--no "Kisses Sweeter Than Wine" (the Raincoats would never speak to him again), two tracks praising Stalin Foiler-of-the-Fascist-Foe. And his modernized concept of the folk enables him to transform a Chic song into a hymn. But internationalist sentiment still prevails--from Bangladeshi folk-rock to a stirring "Guantanamera"--and so does the shameless lust for killer melodies. In fact, if Wyatt had a freak voice as universal as Pete Seeger's he might move the left-wing masses quite nicely. B+