The 1980s were hard on us bleeding heart do-gooders. Reagan, Thatcher, and in Canada, Brian Mulroney turned what was once a leftward- shifting body politic back towards the right. The capitalist pig economy expanded in epic portions throughout the globe. As profits soared for multinational corporations, and as the first- world political machine played life and death games with the third- world countries, left- wingers around the world found themselves demoralized and in a state of total disarray. What was a poor bleeding- heart to do?

The answer for Robert Wyatt was to tackle the issue head on with lyrical bite in one hand and an armful of keyboards in the other. In 1982's Nothing Can Stop Us and 1986's Old Rottenhat, Wyatt takes on the cause with earnest abandon. Whereas Nothing Can Stop Us was more of a tribute to the virtues of institutional and grassroots socialism, Old Rottenhat was more of an attack on the prevailing political and social idealogies of the day.

Oh, and what an attack it is. In his high- pitched warble, Wyatt rails against The Man Keeping The People Down. "There is a kind of compromise you are a master of/ Your endless gentle nudging left us polarised," he sings on "Alliance". "Build your Aryan empire in peace," he squeaks in "The United States of Amnesia." "As history slips out of view/ Bated breath for the nine o'clock news/ Reassembled right before your very eyes: innuendo, rumor and lies," whines Wyatt on "Mass Medium."

While the Chomskyite in us makes us nod our heads in approval, the booty in our behinds sadly withers to the horrible, cheesy music that serves as a backdrop. Wyatt's first two solo records were, at the very least, musically adventurous. Most of Old Rottenhat, on the other hand, is the kind of synth- and- metal- beat slosh that would get you kicked out of Barney The Purple Dinosaur's backing band. Other than the Indo-Eastern drone of "The British Road," most of the tunes summon the most dreadful keyboard tones and wince- inducing singing this side of the old Iron Curtain.

After listening to Old Rottenhat, I had the insane desire to beat up the hippies that make beads on the street corner near my home. Workers of the world, we (and Robert Wyatt) can do better than this.

-Samir Khan