In 2014 Scott Walker joined forces with drone metal noise-mongers Sunn O))). The resulting album Soused actually gathered decent reviews, though Scott's output these days always seems to get good reviews, partly because I think that writers simply don't know what to make of it and are afraid of sounding silly if they criticise some work of art because they don't 'get it'.
I've had this album for the best part of a year and I still don't know what to make of it either. I'm not even sure if I like it, actually.
Soused is, well, I'm not sure what it is really.
For one thing it isn't quite as odd as I was expecting. It's
still probably the maddest record I've heard in years (since the last Scott Walker album Bisch Bosch), but it's still not
quite as utterly bonkers as I thought it might be.
Not knowing anything about Sunn O))) other than what I've
read I was expecting a much noisier record. But although the guitars growl
malevolently they don't squeal and roar and they're not, generally, being
terribly rowdy. Instead we get lots of droning walls of noise, rolling through
the 'songs', but mainly these are kept as the backdrop to Scott's vocals.
So, frequently these songs don't sound greatly different in
approach to those on Scott's recent albums. But where an orchestra might have
been used on Bisch Bosch to create an
uneasy, unsettling soundscape, here it's a bunch of guitars doing the same.
I've only played the entire album a handful of times, and it's not something I
could say I enjoyed. But then I don't
'enjoy' The Drift very much,
certainly not in the same way that I enjoy, say, Scary Monsters, or Before And
After Science. Scott's recent albums are not a fun experience and Soused is more of the same. Impenetrable
words, the bits that you do catch being worrying and disquieting and hinting at all sorts of
unpleasantries. "She's hidden her children", he repeats at one point,
which sends chills down my spine, and we get phrases like like "bristling through damaged fingers" (I think)
with "bristling" all elongated to sound like brist-el-ing… which makes it sound even more worrying.
The vocals are awe-inspiring, as expected, and it's clear that, as
always, he has absolute total command of his voice. It's hugely impressive. He
sings some astonishing things, not least in the last track "Lullaby",
(which is a reconfigured version of the song Scott recorded with Ute Lemper) where at one point he
deliberately sings all over the place, off key, all around the key, but with
total precision. Nothing is left to chance here, everything sounds exactly how Scott wants it to sound. Quite why he wants it to sound like this is something only Scott can answer. He always seems such a mild, reasonable chap when he's interviewed - yet he writes and records music and lyrics that are frequently full of horror and disturbing imagery. What is going on is his head?
Scott's albums need to be played in full. They don't lend
themselves to picking out your 'favourites'. At just 50 minutes and only 5
songs this is an easier album to get through than Bisch Bosch (which I think I've only played 3 or 4 times, ever). Bisch Bosch is perhaps too daunting for me. It
needs a lot of time to be invested in it - there's no way you can't listen to it if you're doing
something else, it's way too demanding a record, and so I need to find 70 minutes
to set aside to play the whole thing. And to be honest, if I ever have a spare 70 minutes and
nothing else to do I can think of plenty of other albums I would rather devote that
time to…
Anyway, I need to try Soused
again, another day. I have this nagging feeling that it's actually quite an accessible album, in a decidedly weird and rather off putting sort
of way, and that one day it will click and all fall into place. Scott's 1995 album Tilt did this to me; after about 15 years I suddenly found one day that I loved the record, all of it, so I still have hope!
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