Scott Walker - Scott 3 & Scott 4 (1969) plus BBC Proms Tribute 2017

These two classic albums from 1969, plus Scott Walker's wider discography, always find regular rotation in my listening habits in the last couple of months of the year, so here's some long overdue posting of Scott 3 & 4 - with a bonus tribute concert from three years ago.

By the time the 60s entered its final year, the former Walker Brothers idol had released two solo records of increasingly ambitious songwriting and arrangement, his own songs dotted between covers notably by Jacques Brel.  For Scott 3, the three Brel covers were placed right at the end of the album, leaving the rest to his most mature songwriting yet, including timeless classics like Copenhagen and Rosemary.  Wally Stott's string arrangements were still sumptuous and classy, but the dissonant drone at the album's outset pointed to even more ambitious music to come.

Walker released no less than three albums in 1969, the second being a contractual commitment to his TV show - but he was saving his own material for his masterpiece.  Originally released under his birth name of Engel, and probably sinking without trace for that reason on initial release, Scott 4 was Walker's first release of all-original material.

 

And seriously, what to even write about this clutch of ten songs without a single dud among them.  Starting your record with a setting of Ingmar Bergman's Seventh Seal to a Morricone-eseque arrangement might seem like an audacious move - following it up with nine more perfect songs with slimmed-down arrangements just makes for one of the greatest albums ever made.  If this post happens to be your first encounter with Scott 4, I envy you beyond description.

Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker is a longtime Scott Walker champion who'd worked with him in 2001, and had taken part in the "Tilting and Drifting" concert at the London Barbican in 2008.  Cocker therefore must've been an obvious choice for this BBC Proms tribute to the 1967-1970 music of Scott, which took place in July 2017.  

 

For this concert, Jarvis was joined by fellow British artist Richard Hawley, US singer-songwriter John Grant, and Susanne Sundfør from Norway.  Each singer takes two songs in the spotlight, and turn about thereafter, all coming together for the closing Get Behind Me.  Providing the sumptuous backing to seventeen of Walker's finest songs are the Heritage Orchestra conducted by Jules Buckley.

Scott 3 link

Scott 4 link

Proms Tribute link

pw: sgtg

Previously posted at SGTG:

Nite Flights

Climate Of Hunter

Tilt

Soused

The Walker Brothers - Nite Flights (1978)

I'm not sure what exactly was the catalyst that finally ended Scott Walker's "wilderness years", in which he'd produced no new songs in seven years, and in such spectacular fashion.  It's generally written that he'd been coasting through an unhappy state of contractual affairs, then reunited with the Walker Brothers at his lowest creative ebb.  By the time the trio put together their third album post-reunion, they apparently saw which way the wind was blowing for the GTO label and went for broke.  But if Gary Leeds and John Maus turned in a fairly decent two/four songs each, Scott Engel's were suddenly on another planet altogether.

The first 16 minutes of Nite Flights, which were also released as an EP, are in hindsight the obvious curtain-raiser to Scott Walker's late solo career, in which each album reached further into the abyss.  Wonder what on earth anyone who was listening in 1978 thought.  Kicking off with discordant guitar blasts and blistering solos between the verses, Shutout is just the beginning of the much more abstract approach to lyrics that Walker had adopted - there's even a sly wink to Brion Gysin at the start of the second verse.  Fat Mama Kick takes inspiration from French intellectual Bernard-Henri Lévy against a similarly harsh background.  Both fade out just as they seem to be getting going, but the album's title track is longer and more electronically tinged, with clear inspiration from Bowie (which wouldn't just go one way).  Then there's The Electrician.

How do you follow a six-minute dark ambient (with an orchestral middle section) horror-story about CIA torture?  Gary Leeds has the unfortunate task, and finishes the first side of the album with the respectable Death Of Romance.  Den Haague is even better, with neat production touches.  By the time you get to John Maus' songs that close the album, though, it's impossible to escape the fact that nothing could touch the sheer otherwordly genius of the first four tracks.

link
pw: sgtg

Scott Walker at SGTG:
Climate Of Hunter
Tilt
Soused

Scott Walker - Climate Of Hunter (1984)

Still can't believe that this is the year we lost Scott Walker.  Been giving this album, his sole release of the 80s, a fresh appraisal recently, so here it in its short & sweet icy glory.  Written and recorded quickly in 1983 after a sluggish start at reactivating his solo career, Walker assembled a team of high-profile session musicians for Climate Of Hunter.  On tracks two and three, Mark Isham drops by for some subtle shading.

A largely muted and mid-tempo affair, only really catching fire on Tracks Three, Five and Seven (yup, that's their titles - Walker didn't want song titles to 'get in the way' for half of the album), Climate Of Hunter is an intriguing cross between an 80s update of his late 60s albums and a pointer towards Tilt a decade later, with song structures gradually dissolving here.  The seven Walker compositions show his wordplay becoming ever more abstract, and the closing cover of Tenessee Williams' Blanket Roll Blues, backed only by Mark Knopfler on bluesy guitar, suits Walker down to the ground.  More next week.

link
pw: sgtg

Previously posted at SGTG: Tilt | Soused

Scott Walker + Sunn O))) - Soused (2014)

A proper tribute today to the gargantuan, sui generis genius of Scott Walker, who sadly left us last week.  Four and a half years ago, whilst reveling in this latest installment of one of music's greatest and weirdest late-career renaissances, I remember wondering if, and hoping, that he'd have at least one more album this phenomenal in him.  Wondering now, after some interesting soundtrack work but no further album, if he was working on anything more, and if it'll see the light of day.

If not, then Soused will stand as one hell of a final chapter in a solo career of two wonderful phases: first, four albums of exquisite, highly literate chamber-pop that got more perfect with each volume.  Then second, a leap into the otherwordly unknown that took a first step on Nite Flights, another tentative one on Climate Of Hunter, then four giant steps that none of his peers, not even Bowie, came close to in their avant-garde immersion.  As much as Bowie left us on a fresh, experimental high, can you imagine him working with Seattle's dark lords of drone metal?

Sunn O))) somehow seemed a perfect fit for Walker, particularly after The Drift, and Soused is a quintessential example of two unique acts coming up with a synergistic collaboration where neither sacrifices any of their identity.  The stunning opener Brando makes this clear right away, as Walker's crooning of BDSM desire (seen through the prism of movies where the title actor gets beaten up) and attendant whip-cracks float over a river of molten drone lava.

Elsewhere, Scott's latter-day lyrical obsessions of human atrocity, disease and decay continue to ensure that the darkness in the scattered fragmentary words matched that of the music.  The human cost of oppression is laid bare in the plaintive "She's hidden her babies away"'s throughout Herod 2014, and the much more surreal Bull was described as "a crusade against existence itself" by Walker.  The grotesques of Bish Bosch continue in Fetish, but the finale of Lullaby proves a stunning finish.  The song, obliquely about assisted dying, was originally recorded by Ute Lemper and released on the Japanese version of her 2000 album.  It loses none of its power on Walker's own version with Sunn O))), and serves as a truly memorable closer to the final album of his lifetime.

link
pw: sgtg

Previously posted at SGTG: Tilt

Scott Walker 1943-2019

R.I.P. :(

What a career... with the most envelope-pushing stuff saved til the end.  Sheer bloody genius.

Previously posted on SGTG: Tilt

Scott Walker - Tilt (1995)

If you've been following this blog long enough, you might have figured out that my listening habits are insanely seasonal; I'm sure this isn't uncommon though.  So come winter, out comes Scott Walker, especially Tilt and after.  Somehow, apocalyptic dirges that sound like they're being narrated by an atrocity-obsessed malevolent skeleton just need the cold and the dark.

Tilt, the first full flowering of the Scott Walker who ended up on the cover of The Wire in 2012, started subtly with the beautiful cinematic string arrangements of Farmer In The City.  Walker's stunning vocal keens a lament for Pier Paolo Pasolini sounded like a natural update of his late 60s work, but that was only the first six minutes.  The odd scraping sounds and lupine croon of The Cockfighter are soon overtaken by a scalding electronic rhythm and Walker's disjointed lyrics, sounding both bang up to date and arcane, archaic, as the album progressed into influences from avant-garde lieder and industrial music, with strange percussive noises everwhere and a memorable church organ blast on Manhattan.  The spare, clean production holds up well, and the album's bleak themes point the way to where he's been going ever since.  Fingers crossed for another new album in the next couple of years?  I don't doubt for a second he's still got it in him.

link