“The Moon In June” is a nineteen minute last gasp of unassuming greatness from an English band that was pioneering (or succumbing to) a kind of electrified doodling that could be marketed as “jazz-rock,” but on this double-LP comprising one title per side, it was their jazziest player – drummer and vocalist Robert Wyatt – who crafted the only non-instrumental track, and the songiest song. And in a period when tedious nineteen minute (or longer) epics were becoming a common ploy among the ambitious, this track is unlike any other. Wyatt warbles a bunch of words about sex and homesickness that he sounds like he is drumming to, and has claimed in interviews that he has absolutely no memory of. But all are buoyed by an oddly discursive melody that steadily varies but never quite repeats; it just snakes across the record sounding like nothing but itself, until the music gives way to the best jazzy-rock playing on the record and a moaning coda with demented violin soloing over manipulated tapes. Wyatt’s departure from this group soon after was so acrimonious that he claims his confidence never really recovered from it, but his group never recovered from this.
Note: For Advent, 25 secular essays about 25 songs, one per day from Dec. 1 through Dec. 25. Each essay is exactly 200 words long.
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