The arrival this week of a second new Wooden Wand album prompted me into finally getting round to “Death Seat”, James Jackson Toth’s terrific return after what, for him, seems to have been a relatively quiet stretch.
What's this, you say? The Coen brothers remaking a John Wayne classic? With the Dude, no less, as Rooster Cogburn? Is this just the latest curveball from the Coens, the kind of twisted joke they're often accused of playing on their audience?
This was, roughly, the initial reception last year when news broke that the Coens were eyeing up True Grit. And, last week, the trailer finally arrived to prove they were serious.
I was reading over this interview with Robert Wyatt today, thinking about “The Ghosts Within”, and about how he flourishes as a collaborator with friends, but not as a bandmember. “The trouble with a band is I can’t take orders and I can’t give orders,” he said around the time of “Comicopera”. “So there’s no comfortable role for me in a band, whereas on a project I think, well, if they’ve asked me I shall try and do whatever it is they’ve imagined me doing. As close as possible. There’s no pressure on me. I try and do what they want.”
