Songs for Insomniacs 78: Matching Mole, “Signed Curtain”

After leaving Soft Machine and releasing a solo album (“The End of an Ear”), Robert Wyatt formed the group “Matching Mole” — a pun on “Machine Molle,” the French translation of “Soft Machine” — with several Canterbury luminaries.

The melancholy “Signed Curtain,” from the first Matching Mole album, is a song about itself: “This is the first verse….” Ultimately, though, the clever self-referentiality fails to bridge the real-life gap that pains the singer (“ ‘cause it won’t help me reach you”). Many Wyatt songs about the limits of art / language would follow.