Scott Walker
Day Two of Scott Walker takes us into the territory that I adore... the 1980's to now. Throghout this period, he would release album after album of incredible material.
I promised no 70's period Walker, but I think it's important to include one comeback album with The Walker Brothers.
The Walker Brothers / Nite Flights
Released 1978
try it
Every once in a while, an album comes along that doesn't simply surprise you, it takes you down an alleyway, rips off all your clothes, then hares away with your socks on its head, singing selections from South Pacific. And just before it disappears from view, you notice that David Bowie, Iggy Pop, and Brian Eno are cavorting alongside it, sharing the spoils and plotting further misdeeds. The fact that the original miscreant then shrugs them aside and tears off on its own is neither here nor there. What matters is, when Scott Walker set to work (somewhat reluctantly, one feels) on the third post-comeback Walker Brothers album, that was the impression which he had in mind. Of course it wouldn't quite work out like that. Whatever else they may have been, as their rebirth accelerated towards its gory end, the Walkers remained a democracy, splitting vocals and songs between the three non-siblings, and only occasionally allowing any one the upper hand. But whereas John was still locked into the art country balladeering which had always been his forte, and Gary was having trouble completing his allotment, Scott had finally realized that he had more to offer than another Kris Kristofferson outtake. As a writer, he had been all but silent since the late 1960s, when his peculiarly twisted post-pop visions sent solo album after solo album hurtling into a commercial void. Now, however, he was reaching back into that abyss, and emerged with four songs -- "Niteflights," "The Electrician," "Shut Out," and "Fat Mama Kick" -- which not only realigned his entire future career, they also twisted the on-going landscape of rock music itself. Electro-pumping soundscapes of grandiose synth, all four were clearly inspired by Bowie's recent work with Iggy and Eno. But they took that role model so much further that within the year, they themselves were delineating much of what Bowie himself would accomplish on his own next two albums (Lodger and Scary Monsters). Elsewhere, Midge Ure later confessed that "The Electrician" inspired him to write Ultravox's "Vienna," and, from there, one can project the entire new romantic/synth-pop movement from Walker's presumably unwitting role models. In a perfect world, Scott would have completed the entire album himself, or at least been given an EP to himself. But of course that was not to be, and so Nite Flights appeared with the rest of the boys, the rest of the baggage, and, though both John and Gary at least tried to keep up with their bandmate, their failure was as painful as it was inevitable. Gary's "Death of Romance" and John's "Disciples of Death" are at least vindicated by their titles, but the songs are as thin as their composers voices and could be outtakes from another album entirely. They're certainly from another planet. - All Music Guide
Released 1984
Walker's only album of the 1980s was both a blow for artistic credibility, and a blow against most of his old fans. The voice of the balladeer was still intact, and still even crooned sometimes. But the arrangements backed brow-furrowing, obtuse lyrics with '80s-oriented rock that incorporated some quasi-classical structures. Walker was seemingly more interested in painting abstracts in which the textures counted more than the content. This made for an album which may have been a hell of a lot more interesting than '80s efforts by other '60s pop stars, but at the same time it was rather impenetrable, and one's attention tended to drift off over the course of the set. Yet it was not half as radical as the avant-garde direction he would stake out with his next album ten years later, Tilt. - All Music Guide
Scott Walker / Tilt
Released 1995
Tilt was Scott Walker's first album following over a decade of silence, and whatever else he may have done during his exile, brightening his musical horizon was not on the agenda. Indescribably barren and unutterably bleak, Tilt is the wind that buffets the gothic cathedrals of everyone's favorite nightmares. The opening "Farmer in the City" sets the pace, a cinematic sweep that somehow maintains a melody beneath the unrelenting melodrama of Walker's most grotesque vocal ever. Seemingly undecided whether he's recording an opera or simply haunting one, Walker doesn't so much perform as project his lyrics, hurling them into the alternating maelstroms and moods that careen behind him. The effect is unsettling, to put it mildly. At the time of its release, reviews were undecided whether to praise or pillory Walker for making an album so utterly divorced from even the outer limits of rock reality, an indecision only compounded by its occasional (and bloody-mindedly deceptive) lurches towards modern sensibilities. "The Cockfighter" is underpinned by an intensity that is almost industrial in its range and raucousness, while "Bouncer See Bouncer" would have quite a catchy chorus if anybody else had gotten their hands on it. Here, however, it is highlighted by an Eno-esque esotericism and the chatter of tiny locusts. The crowning irony, however, is "The Patriot (A Single)," seven minutes of unrelenting funeral dirge over which Walker infuses even the most innocuous lyric ("I brought nylons from New York") with indescribable pain and suffering. Tilt is not an easy album to love; it's not even that easy to listen to. First impressions place it on a plateau somewhere between Nico's Marble Index and Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music -- before long, familiarity and the elitist chattering of so many well-heeled admirers rendered both albums mere forerunners to some future shift in mainstream taste. And maybe that is the fate awaiting Tilt, although one does wonder precisely what monsters could rise from soil so belligerently barren. Even Metal Machine Music could be whistled, after all. - All Music Guide
Released 1996
As the first Scott Walker album to be released in the U.S., It's Raining Today: The Scott Walker Story is an adequate 17-song overview of his solo career, containing many of the highlights from his first five albums ("Jackie," "Montague Terrace (In Blue)," "The Seventh Seal," "The Old Man's Back Again (Dedicated to the Neo-Stalinist Regime)," "Big Louise," "Lights of Cincinnati," "Joanna"), while overlooking some minor gems, including "Matilda" and the B-side "The Plague." Neverthless, it remains a terrific introduction to Walker's music. - All Music Guide
Scott Walker / The Drift
Released 2006
There were intermittent soundtrack and score contributions of varying magnitudes, as well as a couple other low-key projects, but The Drift is Scott Walker's proper follow-up to 1995's Tilt, an album that also happened to trail its predecessor by 11 years. If 1984's Climate of Hunter put the MOR in morose, Tilt avoided the road completely and went straight toward the fractured, fraught images inside Walker's nightmares. It was entirely removed from anything that could've been classified as contemporary. The Drift isn't an equally severe leap from Tilt, but it is darker, less arranged, alternately more and less dense, and ultimately more frightening. Maybe it'll make your body temperature drop a few degrees. Working with what Walker has referred to as "blocks of sound," only a few of the album's 68 minutes have any connection to rock music, and many of those minutes are part of a harrowing 9/11 song that also obliquely references "Jailhouse Rock" as Elvis Presley cries out ("I'm the only one left alive!") to his stillborn twin brother. The songs swing from hovering drones to crushing jolts. The blocks that make them, then, differ tremendously in weight, from one that could be pushed by an index finger to one that could only be hauled by a forklift. Whenever a vast shaft of space opens up, it is eventually stuffed with drastic, horrific dissonance. While a song might contain a constant element or two, they're all in a constant state of unease and flux. Walker's voice matches the activity levels of the sounds, providing a kind of paranoid croon one minute and then, during another, casting almost demonic projections that are nearly as rattling as the accompaniment. From the outset, the album seems impossibly insular and impenetrable, especially if you've been led to believe that Scott Walker's name is synonymous with recluse, but it has everything to do with real lives (or, more accurately, real deaths). Walker is acutely aware of what's going on with the world outside his supposed candle-lit bunker; he's only finding very unique (OK, bloody minded) ways to bring them up. Any mystique behind the recordings is laid to waste by one scene from a documentary, titled 30 Century Man, which shows Walker — a baseball hat-wearing sixty-something man from Ohio — instructing another man on how to thump a slab of meat. It looks and sounds absurd, of course (the participants seem to be aware of this), but then again, the results are used in a song inspired by the public executions of Benito Mussolini and his mistress. Broken spells aside, how much more bleak could this album be? None more bleak. - All Music Guide
2 comments:
I know you promised no 70's Walker, but is there anyway I could get 'Til The Band Comes In from you if you have it?
Hi Shawn - 'Til The Band Comes In is posted!
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