DaystormMusic 2026
12th House
World-weary wordsmith from Wisconsin, who went on a time warp, travels back to measure the wall of mortality.
When the subject arises of spoken word packaged together with music to carry a socially charged message to the masses, aficionados talk about “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” – yet Gil Scott-Heron and Bob Reitman were contemporaries, and the only reason the latter didn’t get there first was that, unlike the former, he preferred to intone engaging stanzas over tuneful backdrop on stage, rather than in a studio. The Milwaukeean radio deejay may have written a groovy, albeit quietly angry, piece called “The Revolution Is Here” as early as in 1968, but it didn’t end up on his only, until now, longplay, “The Eleventh House” from 1972, so there were a few outstanding opuses in the veteran’s archives which warranted the appearance, upon his retirement in 2024 after decades of riding the waves, of this record.
If Reitman’s debut referred, in astrological terms, to future-oriented ambitions, “12th House” is all about compassion, loneliness and rolling the existential wheel to one’s final destination. However, while “Death” marks the start of the platter with Reitman’s intimate reciting of acceptance-warmed lines over the eerie whoosh of producer Gary Tanin’s synths, it’s a life-affirming offering whose elements span the poet’s entire journey, with several tracks on display being reimagined numbers from his old album. Yes, “It All Fell Together” not too coincidentally turned into the folk-tinged “It All Came Together” here, and “Back Bay Park” got appended to the incantatory “When The Smoke Clears” where Jack Spann’s ivories glisten under Robert’s parchment-rustle reading of verses, and Sam Llanas’s voice and strum glimmer, as they do on the profoundly philosophical, and phonetically wondrous, “Fragments” – but the more recent cuts enhance the gravity of the old-guard’s delivery.
The pictures his words paint feel riveting – perhaps, not so much on 1958’s “The First One” which brings things to a close by dusting off, and artificially aging, rhymes that only a teenager could pen, as opposed to the aforementioned revolutionary mantra, still-seething and enhanced with John Hoier’s infectious vocals and jangly guitar – so ignoring the kaleidoscopic cascade of aural drawings the funky “David Bowie / Dr. Kissinger Blues” projects is merely impossible. The memories crammed into “Most Things from ’58” – concocted in 1987, it’s the latest song on this record – should reveal the octogenarian’s proclivity for pop polish, yet the sax-smeared “When Martin’s Soul Flew Up” – emerging within the week of Dr. King’s murder – will waltz towards the blue, but not before the humorously histrionic “Einstein’s Dream” reaches for orchestral grandeur, and “Buddy Holly” wraps tragedy into rockabilly. And then there’s “A Kind Of Funny Feeling” which locates the Wisconsin bard in the stream of history and stamps his legacy with jovial elegance.
A mesmerically arresting work, “12th House” is Bob Reitman’s testament.
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