The Soft Machine’s Robert Wyatt was determined to create a solo career as abstract and fanciful as his experimental days in the group. His unconventional melodic sense combined with his desire to work with unorthodox musicians such as Fred Frith and Gary Windo practically guaranteed that he would create compositions that swung far from pop music into the no-man’s-land of art song and jazz-rock. Ruth Is Stranger Than Richard is the follow-up to Rock Bottom, an album that suggested great personal struggle as Wyatt adapted to life in a wheelchair after a multiple-story fall that broke his spine. Many of the tracks here are earlier tunes that Wyatt polished off for popular consumption. “Solar Flares” adds a keyboard choir that meshes with the voices that sound as if they were coming from inside Wyatt’s head. “5 Black Notes and 1 White Note” wanders like a somber march through the barren winter woods. Charlie Haden’s “Song For Che” ends things on an elegiac note.