Scott Walker (1958-2019) by DriftingOrpheus
Scott Walker (1958-2019)
Avant-Garde, Baroque Pop, Experimental
Artist Score:
- Chart updated: 03/04/2024 16:45
- (Created: 09/08/2021 16:40).
- Chart size: 16 albums.
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The album begins with 'Mathilde', an English rendition of Jacques Brel's 1964 chanson that details an abusive, romantic entanglement that forever resurrects like a pitiful, desperate phoenix. This is an opportune time to discuss Walker's admiration and veneration for Brel's work, once even calling him the "most important singer-songwriter in the world". Brel's pension to uncover and rhapsodize on all things strange and uncomfortable in society appealed to Walker, during a period where such things weren't touched or even discussed in pop music, let alone music at large. As a result, Walker christened his exodus from the mainstream by breathing life into Brel's haunting, challenging and sunless parables. At their moral best, they're hopeless, demoralizing accounts of unrequited love and at their worst, accounts of molestation, both mentally and physically at the hands of Army officers. Despite Walker's radical and firmly adult direction, his albums began to fall on a more gradually disinterested audience. Yet, it began to plot the roadmap for a rapidly escalating sonic approach that few (if any) could find parallels to. On 'Mathilde', Walker channels Brel while proclaiming, "My hands, you'll start to shake again when you remember all the pain; Mathilde's come back to me; You'll want to beat her black and blue but don't do it, I beg of you." The track is framed within an up-tempo sheen, reminiscent of a march into battle or a swaggering anthem of boisterous victory. The subject's early indecision is apparent with his mind made up by the end of the piece. Walker employed the assistance of three composers on 'Scott', perhaps most synonymously, Angela Morley (then Wally Stott), who would go on to further heights as Walker's arranger. On track two, Montague Terrace (In Blue), one of three penned by Scott himself, Morley crafts a dizzying, yet chic sheen before propelling walls of brass that instantly unionize with Walker's baritone hollers. There's an air of satire purveying here, like a thick vapor. "The girl across the hall makes love; Her thoughts lay cold like shattered stone; Her thighs are full of tales to tell of all the nights she's known," Walker details. It's unclear if the image is one of a much yearned for, idyllic, societal upgrade or a disdain for others' possessions and dispositions.
Arriving third, LP highlight 'Angelica' softly vibrates before segueing into Walker's cries for the song's titular maiden. The organ tones from the onset color the track with melancholy, conjuring images of eulogization for lost love. Walker explains, "Now in my solitude, I tend the flowers that I buy, As they slowly fade and die, watered by the tears I cry." 'Angelica' represents a landmark in the early days of Walker's solo odyssey, as an indication of his desire to routinely croon overtop pessimist anthems far before it was vogue, complete with a dim worldview that would become progressively overcast. Fourth Track, 'The Lady from Baltimore', is Walker's attempt at Tim Hardin's classic. Scott's take is fittingly folky, with the prose in lock-step with his bleak paradigm. His voice sports a twangy timbre, faintly foreshadowing his self-assessed "Wilderness Years" in the early 1970's. However, his foray into folk and flirtation with country is marvelously executed. Walker's most ardent statement on the LP is the final track, 'Amsterdam', a swooning, cinematic recoloring of Jacques Brel's famous live staple. It's through this piece that Walker proves himself to be most worthy to succeed Brel as the patron saint of fatalistic allegories. The track opens with accordion hisses that wash over the empty pockets of sonic space like a patient sunrise as eyelids softly open to greet it. Walker sets the the scene for the finale with a tale of the rawest kind of human desperation, with a pistol of willful ignorance tucked away in its holster. The tale is as much about revelry as it is despair, or maybe more astutely, how the two co-exist in the minds of the downtrodden. 'Amsterdam' steadily ascends, starting as a lone man recounting a drunken memory out loud. Soon, it seems as if others join in (characterized by the power of Walker's vocals). Finally, the collective emerges, taking the form of the swirling instrumentation that rises the tide lead by Walker's voice. It's a picture so vivid that it's hard to disassociate the visual from the track. It's a stunning statement ushered off by Walker's repeated chants. 'Amsterdam' is without question Walker's finest Brel interpretation and one of his career's most prolific efforts.
Noel Scott Engel died on March 22, 2019, but the world knew him as Scott Walker. However, few people knew that he died in 1967 as well. This death did not serve as a passageway to the afterlife, but rather, a reincarnation. An invigoration. A rebirth. 'Scott' remains the genesis of a career that words couldn't succinctly articulate. The Scott Walker of the Walker brothers walked and died, dried up in a desert of creative disillusionment and disgust so that the Scott Walker that would follow could run and consequently, swim oceans fiercely cavernous and artistically unbound. The transaction included trading in a handsome, youthful face for a stern demeanor and a military cap that slumped lower and lower throughout the years, reflecting the thematic directions his music would take while hiding the weathered, hardened features of his face. The seedlings planted within 'Scott' would grow to spawn a wonderous garden whose fruits few would taste. Walker saw very little monetary success throughout the remainder of his career and by 1978, he was a recluse. He would occasionally resurface with records that would scorch earth and send those with their ears to the ground into a frenzy. By some, he is regarded as the most unheralded genius in music history. To others, he was a passing shadow of an assembly line industry of musical malaise. In 1967, with a brilliant, stark solo debut, he began a journey of endless ambition fit with thankless repercussions. It's a journey we all should take, for it is rooted in the very soul of what music should be, endlessly imaginative and unyielding. However, few have the inclination to look at the natural world as Walker did. It's a blessing and a curse.
"In the port of Amsterdam there's a sailor who drinks
And he drinks, and he drinks, and he drinks once again,
He drinks to the health of the whores of Amsterdam
Who have promised their love to a thousand other men
They've bargained their bodies and their virtue long gone
For a few dirty coins, and when he can't go on,
He plants his nose in the sky and he wipes it up above,
And he pisses like I cry for an unfaithful love."
-Amsterdam
Standout Tracks:
1. Amsterdam
2. Angelica
3. The Lady from Baltimore
88.8 [First added to this chart: 09/16/2021]
Scott's much lauded voice is no longer the pristine, nimble entity which once danced gracefully atop oceans of orchestral merriment and crystalline, sonic soundscapes. Walker's voice, yet still powerful and imposing, is weather-beaten, strained and distinctly operatic. The transfiguration began in earnest on 1995's 'Tilt', however, here, Walker has completed his conversion into a decidedly tragic, tortured and spectral organism. He exists now, not as a separate presence isolated from his music, but rather a byproduct of its potent, thematic futility. Opening track, 'Cossacks Are', typifies the malefic overtones of the record to come, unfurling with a snarling, tumbling guitar spine, fused firmly with a stop/start drum motif which creates a dizzying sensation of circling dread. Walker's motives on 'Cossacks' are vaguely political, despite never being explicit. There's a glimpse of a warning that a black cloud of returning fascism is on the horizon. Walker cites quotes from an investigation regarding the war crimes of former Serbian President Slobodan Milošević, which included the murder of his political adversaries. Walker prophesizes on future unrest to come by bellowing, "Cossacks are charging in, charging into fields of white roses." The weighted, punishing 'Clara' follows, a lachrymose romance told from the lips of Benito Mussolini's mistress, Clara Petacci. It's markedly obscure but Walker has found himself determined to venture further and further into the gray. The track is distinctly sectional, alternating between swirling, pulsating percussion and soft spoken words from both Walker and guest vocalist, Vanessa Contenay-Quinones. It may be the most visceral nightmare featured on 'The Drift', yet, Scott has described it as a fascist love song. It's easy to forget amongst passages of what sounds like congregating insects and vicious body blows. The dichotomy of Contenay-Quinones's serene vocals and the hellish soundscape spearheads the thematic intentions of the song. "Sometimes I feel like a swallow, a swallow which by some mistake, has gotten into an attic and knocks its head against the walls in terror," she laments. Petacci followed her lover to her death, opting to die alongside him and shooing away safe passage. 'Clara' is a fully-realized account of misguided, unshakable loyalty to an insidious, but powerful bigot. It's an absolute stroke of virtuosity.
Walker's appetite for obscure inspiration is wet further on third entry, 'Jesse', a track that finds parallels between the events of September 11th, 2001 and the death of Elvis Presley's stillborn brother. Pause quickly and internalize that. The thematic connective tissue that unites the two ideas are the immense voids that linger with their absences. Accompanying Walker's vocals is a crooked, malformed alteration of the famous guitar revs found in Presley's own, 'Jailhouse Rock'. It's a sluggish, hopeless confessional which ends with the narrator punctuating his profound loneliness by proclaiming, "Alive; I'm the only one left alive." Bouncing from one fever dream to the next, fourth track, 'Jolson and Jones' is an account of a pair of two crazed, post-limelighted showmen. Embedded within, the shaking of hands between the shuffling of feet on pavement and the panicked howls of a donkey is conducted. Valiantly, Walker is able to create a cohesive structure from these ingredients (and a damn good one at that). 'J&J' crescendos with the famous utterance of "I'll punch a donkey in the streets of Galway" proving that there is no gig or amount of degradation this pair of washed-up performers won't entertain. Subsequently, 'Cue' is a full itinerary in the life of a virus down to how it grows, mutates and spreads. Scott has also indicated that the track is a hazy rhapsodization on the philosophical concept of the self. I'll avoid rumination on the intricacies of those postulations for fear of doing a disservice to Scott's immaculate headspaces. However, 'Cue' is worth its 10-minute runtime for featuring the album's most ominous presence of unease. Late album entry, 'The Escape' represents a moment of abject oddness on 'The Drift'. It again accents a perceptible sensation of plummeting by way of the shadowy rhythm section. Conversely, it flourishes with airy outbursts of psychedelia. It's only fitting that the coda comes in the form of Walker (I still can't believe it's him) performing a Donald Duck impression by way of a Bugs Bunny quote. "What's up, Doc" is intended to be a reference to a Mel Blanc car-accident induced coma spring loaded within a track designed to detail a Jewish Rabbi witnessing a car bombing. You got all that? There will be an exam. It's an incomprehensible piece of music. The album comes to rest with 'A Lover Loves', a subdued acoustic guitar vehicle with heavy production stripped away. It's as if the record is a wounded animal seeking respite from fight-or-flight. A beautiful conclusion, but not without some of Walker's creative curiosity.
There's a tried and true formula for solving complex problems. Turn it on its side and look at it from a different perspective. That's the simplified way of summarizing 'The Drift'. Walker examined issues that captured his interest, made origami from them and presented them to the world in a shape which only he could conceive. The record doesn't gain its gravitas from the mere act of going off of the sonic deep-end. It's a captivating collection of songs because of the author's ability to synthesize the ugly, horrid and just plain odd into stirring tapestries. Walker has eschewed the term 'songs' when describing the album's chapters. A cynic would likely label that as self-importance or ostentation. However, a closer look at the man and his boundless humility would quell those accusations. Scott, at this point in his career, was practically a flesh-bound vessel for inhuman beings hard-pressed to tell tales of woe. How a human being reaches that state of consciousness is sure to remain a mystery, but as long as albums like 'The Drift' continue to arise, the vast, undiscovered arctic plains of creative exploration will need to be mapped. Unfortunately, Scott's dead and the remaining land will need a new Magellan, but he managed to chart a lifetime's worth of territory while keeping a detailed, frightening and thought-provoking travel log. 'The Drift' is his circumnavigation.
"Into pockets unstitching so weighted with pins,
Into eyes imploding on mazes of sins."
- Jolson and Jones
Standout Tracks:
1. Clara
2. Cossacks Are
3. Jolson and Jones
88.3 [First added to this chart: 09/16/2021]
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Scott Walker (1958-2019) composition
Decade | Albums | % | |
---|---|---|---|
1930s | 0 | 0% | |
1940s | 0 | 0% | |
1950s | 0 | 0% | |
1960s | 5 | 31% | |
1970s | 5 | 31% | |
1980s | 1 | 6% | |
1990s | 1 | 6% | |
2000s | 2 | 13% | |
2010s | 2 | 13% | |
2020s | 0 | 0% |
Artist | Albums | % | |
---|---|---|---|
|
|||
Scott Walker | 15 | 94% | |
Scott Walker & Sunn O))) | 1 | 6% |
Scott Walker (1958-2019) chart changes
Biggest climbers |
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Up 1 from 7th to 6th Scott 4 by Scott Walker |
Biggest fallers |
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Down 1 from 6th to 7th Soused by Scott Walker & Sunn O))) |
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Rating | Date updated | Member | Chart ratings | Avg. chart rating |
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