rambling thoughts - mrs. murphy

Scott Walker recorded "Mrs Murphy" way back in 1966. Although it's technically credited to the Walker Brothers it was released on an EP called Solo Scott, Solo John which, as the name obviously implies contained two solo tracks each from Scott Engel and John Maus.

 

And one of Scott's songs was the self-penned "Mrs Murphy". It's pretty much the first of Scott's run of classic kitchen sink dramas (he later refined this style of writing on such wonders as "Montague Terrace" or "Such A Small Love" or "The Amorous Humphrey Plugg" (which is arguably the pinnacle of these acutely observed slices of suburban 60's life)).

 

But "Mrs Murphy" surely has one of Scott's best ever lyrics. For all Scott's love of obscure film noir and the existential dread of directors like Bergman, "Mrs Murphy" is rooted firmly in the working class streets of 60's England. It's a mini film for the ears, as if Room At The Top or Saturday Night, Sunday Morning or Billy Liar had been put to music. 

 

The unfolding scandal of the affair, the gossiping wives, the details of the street, the mysterious tall boy lodging at number 22 – all sketched out in just three concise verses, but such vivid, perfectly described verses. Oddly, despite all the detail and realism it's impossible to think of "Mrs Murphy" in anything other than black and white - it's so clearly the mid 1960s and England just seemed so totally black and white then... The song is also very cleverly constructed so that the listener switches across various points of view as the story develops.

 

The third verse begins ‘Poor Mr Johnson, being married to a wife, who should be caged’ – and it’s the sheer relish with which Scott delivers the word ‘caged’ which makes it so wonderful. It's my favourite line in a song filled with plenty of gems. And it's a brilliant bit of singing.  

 

The whole song is terrific though, the orchestral arrangement is just tremendous, and Scott’s vocal is one of his all time best. A genuine triumph.

scott walker / sunn o))) - soused

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!

 

 

scott walker top ten

So today's Guardian has a Top Ten Scott Walker songs.

 

http://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2014/mar/05/10-of-the-best-scott-walker

 

They're all good songs, but 10 of the best that Scott's ever been involved with?

I beg to differ.

The startling omission of anything from Scott 3 or Tilt is remarkable. And clearly wrong.

Here's my ten.

1. "My Ship Is Coming In" - one of the few optimistic Walker Brothers' songs. It also has one of the most stirring choruses ever written and Scott (and John) sing the heck out of it. The fade out is superb, as they both start improvising a bit with the words.

2. "Mrs Murphy" - while "Archangel" is superb, it's "Mrs Murphy" that is surely the pinnacle of Scott's kitchen sink dramas. "Poor Mr Johnson, being married to a wife... who should be caged". The whole thing is fantastic, the deftly drawn characters, the gossip, the scandal, but it's the sheer relish in Scott's voice as he sings "should be caged" which is the icing on the cake for me.

3. "Such A Small Love" - arguably my favourite ever Scott song. The strings, the voice, the aching fatalistic romanticism of it all, the way he conveys SO much emotion in the final line "such a small love, such... a little... tear..." 

4. "Humphrey Plugg" - which fights "Mrs Murphy" for the best sixties' vignette. I adore the whole story of this song, the way that "pavements of poets will write that I died in nine angels arms, and they all were smiling". Humphrey's flights of fancy are marvellously contrasted with the mundane (Dr Martin and I both love the way Scott sings of "the telly"). 

5. "Big Louise". Was there ever a sadder description of a weary, worn out person than "she's a haunted house, whose windows are all broken"? The arrangement on this song is amazing. There's been nothing like it, ever. Scott's vocal is brilliant too, even more than usual.

6. "Boy Child" - continues the mood of "Big Louise", but takes it into even more abstract territory. Utterly beautiful. How can this be missed out?

7. "The Electrician" is the only choice I'd agree with. Not only does it break new sonic ground, but it's a sweepingly lovely track too, despite the nightmarish visions of the lyrics.  

8. "Rawhide" - a song that begins with hesitant cowbells and the swooping vocal "This is how you disappear" - that's brilliant. Scott reinvented himself totally with this album, going way beyond the weirdness of Nite Flights. At least Nite Flights had recognisable touchstones (Scott kept playing "Heroes" to everyone, saying he wanted that sort of sound) but Climate Of Hunter went out into a whole new world, a world inhabited by no-one but Scott.

9. "Farmer In The City" - how could this be missed out of any list of Scott Walker essentials? I mean really! This is a song that still has the capacity to make me cry, no matter how many times I've now heard it. It's devastatingly beautiful, a genuine work of astonishing art.

I can't pick anything from The Drift or Bish Bosch because both albums, to me at least, need to be played in their entirety to get the full effect. I agree with the Guardian that "Clara" is amazing, but as a stand alone track its full effect is lessened. When the whole album is played it is an incredible part of the sequence. Bish Bosch has only received about 4 complete plays since I got it. I just can't bring myself to play it - when I do, I'm surprised by the sheer amount of warped humour, but listening to the record takes a mighty effort.  

So my tenth is a sideways step:

10. "Scope J" from Ute Lemper's album Punishing Kiss. I would LOVE to hear Scott's vocal on this track, but even without his distinctive voice it's totally a Scott song. Written by Scott, played by his band, it's a wonderful, baffling, intriguing track. And that's how the best songs should be. 

scott walker in the 1970s

After his run of brilliant 1960s records Scott Walker seemed to give up songwriting for most of the 1970s. His voice was still strong, always impressive, but there's an over-riding feeling that Scott was simply going through the motions.

 

Having said that there are some gems to be found. These early 1970s albums are mostly unloved and overlooked for a fairly good reason – on the whole they are very much the poor relations of Scotts 1 – 4 and are generally MOR slush and/or oddly anaemic soft country.

1972’s The Moviegoer is arguably the best. As the title suggests the tracks are all Scott’s interpretations of songs from film soundtracks, and on the whole they’re pretty good. We still have the wonderful Johnny Franz in charge of the strings and orchestral arrangements, and the overall sound isn’t too far removed from the lushness of Scott 3. We don’t have any Scott originals of course, which is a terrible shame, but his vocals are superb, he sounds involved and committed and in general the standard is at least as high as ‘Til The Band Comes In. The opening "This Way Mary" is simply gorgeous and "The Ballad of Sacco and Vanzetti" is a terrific Western infused number. All in all, it’s a far better album than its reputation suggests.

By contrast 1973’s Any Day Now is probably the weakest. It’s not terrible, but there’s little that really stands out. The title track is all forced jollity which simply doesn’t work, and "Maria Bethania" is perhaps the worst track with Scott’s name on it - he sings in a weirdly cod-Jamaican accent which is hugely misguided. Things improve with the moody "Cowboy", a Randy Newman song that Scott interprets well, and towards the end of the record we have two tracks (Jimmy Webb’s "If Ships Were Made To Sail" and a lovely song called "We Could Be Flying") that hint at past glories with intriguing string arrangements and a more committed vocal. But the rest of the album is dominated by bored sounding covers of songs like "Ain’t No Sunshine" and "David Gates’ "If" – and in fact Telly (Kojak) Savalas actually did a better version a year or so later, which kind of demonstrates how poor Scott’s version is…

Scott put out another album later in 1973 – the country influenced Stretch. It’s a better album, and Scott seems keener on these country songs, but the song arrangements are sadly dull and ultimately rather forgettable, with only Scott’s peerless vocals to recommend them. Best track – a lovely version of another Randy Newman song, "Just One Smile", which reminds the listener just what a tremendous singer Scott is, while at the same time reminding the listener of how wasted this tremendous voice is, on such blandly presented material.

In 1974 we had another country styled album – We Had It All at least tried something new. Scott had discovered an up and coming country singer called Billy Joe Shaver, and four of the new album’s songs were by him. But Scott, being lazy, didn’t record the new songs until summer 1974, by which time Waylon Jennings, a man with infinitely bigger Country credentials, had issued an album of Shaver’s songs (including all the ones that Scott had chosen) called Honky Tonk Heroes. By the time of its release We Had It All simply came across as a poor man’s version of the very successful Waylon Jennings album, saddled with syrupy arrangements and uninteresting instrumentation. However, Scott still manages to rise above the blandness with a lovely version of Gordon Lightfoot’s standard "Sundown" and on all the songs his vocals are just perfect.

 

After this of course he rejoined John and Gary Walker in 1975 for the No Regrets album – an album with basically one staggeringly good song and a bunch of really weak filler. The sheer power of the superb title track bludgeons the rest of the album into the dirt. They followed this a year later with Lines which was generally a better overall record, though with no real standout tracks.

 

And then, just as it looked like the Walker Brothers would fade out into ignominious obscurity they issued the bizarre Nite Flights in 1978. For the first time in ages the album was newly composed: four supremely dull John Walker songs, two bland Gary Walker songs and four new Scott Walker tracks of astounding originality.

 

The new Scott tracks were like nothing he'd ever written before. Taking the sound of Bowie's "Heroes" as a starting point, Scott's songs for Nite Flights are startlingly futuristic. Gone is the cloying sentimentality of the past, gone are the romantic strings, gone is that swoonsome baritone voice. Instead we have harsh guitars, pounding drums, a foghorn of a vocal style and lyrics that are, frankly scary. The title track is a nightmarish melange of visceral imagery - "the dark dug up by dogs / the stitches torn and broke / the raw meat fist - you choke" - what it all means is anyone's guess, but it creates terrifying mood. This was a whole new Scott Walker, uncompromising, doing things entirely his own way. It sets the template for much of the rest of Scott’s career.

 

The crowning glory of Scott's four songs is "The Electrician" - musically it switches from high shimmering strings which create an extremely uneasy air, to an incongruous mariachi sound in the middle of the song. The vocal is assured, confident and commanding. The lyrics, when they can be deciphered at all, seem to concern torture in South America. It's both utterly beautiful and absolutely terrifying - a description that can be used for virtually every track in Scott's later career.  

 

An EP of just the brilliant Scott tracks was issued alongside the album, and - sorry John and Gary - this is really all you need. 

the next day - the return of david bowie

I had never expected to hear anything new from David Bowie; I would have put good money him never releasing any new material ever again, and I'd resigned myself a few years back to the fact that he'd clearly retired. So this was a huge shock. The first listen to "Where Are We Now?" play was approached with quite some trepidation and to be honest I was slightly disappointed on first listen. It doesn't immediately grab your attention and I think my expectations were way too high.

But after just the second play something clicked in my brain and I realised that it was genuinely one of the most marvellous recordings I'd heard for quite some time. There's a quiet restrained dignity about it, a lack of pretension and flashiness that's both disarming and charming. And there are a couple of points which actually choked me up a bit. The understated emotion shines through the more you hear the song. And although you may read in the ill-informed press that Bowie's voice is not what is was, well I would strongly disagree with that. His vocal is actually very reminiscent of "Thursdays Child", the lovely, and similarly vulnerable, single from 1999. Both songs have Bowie singing in a slightly weary, melancholy manner. But this is clearly deliberate - it's not a showy vocal, it's intentionally low key, he's acting the song, like he's done so many times before, and if you listen to the end of the song there's absolutely no doubt that he hasn't actually lost any of the power in his voice - so pooey to the stupid hacks and the doubters!

Unsurprisingly it most closely resembles the sound on Heathen and Reality, Bowie's previous two albums, both produced by Tony Visconti and featuring many of the same musicians. The textures, the way Bowie's voice is recorded, the guitar sounds - they all expand upon techniques used by Visconti on tracks like Reality's "The Loneliest Guy" (another song with a faltering and hesitant vocal, deliberately sung in this vulnerable manner by a man in full control), or Heathen's "I Would Be Your Slave".
 

To strengthen my conviction that his voice was undiminished by time I looked at the testimony of producer Tony Visconti, who spent two years on the new album. He says that Bowie still has one of the strongest voices he's ever worked with in a studio, and that Bowie's health is extremely good. That's good to know, as the rumours - based on absolutely no proof whatsoever - over the past few years have saddled David with everything from a stroke to cancer. Visconti expressed some surprise that this song was chosen as the lead single for the album, as it is rather atypical of the rest of the album. But, Visconti noted with a smile, as always David does just what he wants and it always works out fine.

And the video was oddly compelling, and decidedly weird. And as such, it's very Bowie. Towards the end there are a couple of shots of DB standing in a messy art studio looking rather serious, but somehow, at 66 he still manages to look so damn cool that the first time I saw this I broke into such a big grin.

By tea time on that first day the song was number one in the iTunes charts! - so pooey also to the Biebers and the Rihannas - here's a proper song, played by real people and sung by a man who needs no autotune. Aside from the song itself, I think what really wowed commentators is that it came completely out of nowhere. The secrecy surrounding the new project was brilliant. Absolutely no-one knew anything until the video was distributed. In an age where Lady Gaga is giving you minute-by-minute updates via Twitter on what hat she's going to wear ('do I choose the one shaped like a toilet or the one made of beef??'), DB has recorded an entire album and NO ONE KNEW. Who else could pull this off?

 

Then the album, The Next Day came out in March. 

I know I’m biased, and I’d probably have liked almost anything Bowie came up with after ten years of silence, but really, objectively, this is such a fresh sounding, exciting, exhilarating record that it genuinely doesn’t sound like an album recorded by a 66 year old. I hope all the rumours of ill health that have dogged Bowie over the past few years are just that, or at the very least any ill health is now behind him, because on the evidence of The Next Day there’s so much more creativity and life in him yet. 14 tracks, all of equally high standard, every one a little gem, and every one intensely different from the others. It’s like 14 different facets of Bowie. Plus there's 4 more bonus tracks to be had, and they are all pretty damn good too.

On first listen I was totally entranced, and my smile grew wider and wider as the album progressed. There’s so much going on - on every song there are dozens of little nods to the past, great fun for a seasoned Bowie fan like me, yet there is absolutely no wallowing in past glories. And it grows with every listen. Every new play reveals more and more. This is an urgent album, demanding your complete attention, and it positively bristles with invention. Most of the songs are around the three / four minute mark, they are all tight, concise, no filler, no flab. Some tracks have the most fantastic backing vocals, others have stonkingly heavy guitar work, some have bizarre rhythms and frantic drumming, and all have some of the best vocals that DB has ever committed to tape.

"Where Are We Now?" had attracted a lot of press comments about how tremulous Bowie’s voice sounded. As I suspected this was intentional, Bowie was acting the song – the rest of the album finds him really belting out some tracks – for example, the angry title song opens the album with a massive burst of energy and a cracking vocal - ‘here I am, not quite dying’ snarls DB in what is surely a dig at all those who’d written him off.

I could waffle on all day about how much I love this record but here are some of the highlights -

the deceptively catchy "Valentine’s Day" has one of the sweetest melodies on the album, yet the lyrics deal with a kid shooting his classmates at school… the closing "Heat" which is moody and mysterious and is as close to Scott Walker as DB has ever come. Musically this song could have fitted onto Scott’s Climate Of Hunter.

Elsewhere there are a couple of frantically loopy songs – "If You Can See Me" seems to have every musician playing at a different speed with Bowie spitting out the vocal, yet unaccountably it all hangs together and it really sticks in your brain. And "How Does The Grass Grow?" finds Bowie la-la-ing the melody from the Shadows’ "Apache", which ought to be very silly, but comes over as weirdly sinister. Then there are the more straightforward songs like "The Stars (Are Out Tonight)" or "You Will Set The World On Fire" which ROCK and slower pieces like the sinister "Dirty Boys" which is over far too quickly, or the Low-esque "Love Is Lost" which is full of Eno-style squelchy drums. "I’d Rather Be High" has a chorus that sounds like the most 1960s chorus ever, yet the verses have angular, very Tom Verlaine-esque guitars.

The band is magnificent. Bowie has used a small group of tried and tested musicians, people he knew he could rely on entirely. Earl Slick and Gerry Leonard combine to become every guitarist Bowie has ever worked with, plus a whole load that he hasn’t – here there’s a Frippian sound, over there a bit of Reeves Gabrels, or a dash of Belew, or a Mick Ronson lick. But it’s all new, so very fresh and it’s genuinely thrilling stuff.

The drumming is superb – Zachary Alford takes the lion's share, but Bowie stalwart Sterling Campbell also anchors a number of songs – Sterling has worked with Bowie for nearly 20 years, and the links go further back as his drum teacher was none other than Dennis Davis, Bowie’s drummer from Young Americans to Scary Monsters.

On bass we have the ever-wonderful Gail Ann Dorsey on most songs, with Tony Levin on a couple and producer Tony Visconti on another. Bowie himself plays a bit of guitar, and most of the keyboards, and apart from the odd saxophone overdub or strings session that was pretty much it. A small group playing much of the material live in the studio.

I bought the CD, from a real shop. I walked back to work feeling absurdly pleased with myself that I’ve bought every Bowie album since Let’s Dance (30 years ago almost to the day) on the day of release. I’ve no idea why that’s important but it somehow makes me feel good… even having the streamed version prior to the actual release date didn't reduced the excitement of picking up The New David Bowie Album off the shelf. And those are words I never thought I’d be typing in 2013.

Of course I bought the deluxe edition with the bonus tracks. These are very much bonus pieces – they probably wouldn’t fit on the album anywhere else, but I’m slightly disappointed that they’ve been added onto the end (rather than occupying a bonus disc) as they kind of spoil the brilliant ending that "Heat" provides. The darkness and mystery of "Heat" will be somewhat spoiled by the jaunty swing of "So She" which now follows.

But these are minor (and fixable) quibbles. The music itself is astonishing, the singing is even more astonishing considering the 10 year lay off, and the lyrics are by turns dark and troubling, witty and playful, and densely opaque – as all the best Bowie lyrics always are.

The sleeve design, with its rework of the "Heroes" sleeve, has grown on me, but the fold out lyric sheet is incredibly hard to read - doesn’t Bowie realise that some of us are getting on a bit and our eyesight isn’t what it used to be!

Probably the best thing about this album is that it sounds so very David Bowie, all the little touches of past Bowie songs are whooshed up into a sound which is partly new, partly familiar, but completely Bowie. It couldn’t be anyone else. As I said, every track is tremendous, every track is unique and every track is a brilliant experience. This may not be Bowie’s best album – there are just too many other candidates for that title – but it’s certainly up there with the best. I really, genuinely, mean that.

Welcome back, David, it's so good to have you back in my life again!

  

scott

Scott Walker made four almost perfect records between 1967 and 1969 called simply Scott, Scott 2, Scott 3 and, you guessed it, Scott 4.

The Walker Brothers weren't brothers, and none of their surnames were Walker. Nonetheless during 1965 and 1966 they had more members in their fanclub than the Beatles did in theirs. You would imagine that the three young Americans would have loved this state of affairs, and two of them did. But while Gary and John embraced the pop star lifestyle, hanging out at the coolest clubs and bars with the Rolling Stones and the like, Scott hated all this. An early 1967 tour with the Walkers headlining over Jimi Hendrix just proved to Scott how out of step the band had suddenly become. Hendrix managed to blow the Walkers offstage most nights just by the sheer power of his music - so much so that setting fire to his guitar seemed somewhat unnecessary. After that sort of histrionic stage display the Walkers' act now seemed rather staid. So they simply called it a day. 

Scott was now free to pursue a more esoteric style of music. But he was still constrained by the needs of his managers and his record label to produce hits. Scott Walker would have preferred to sing Jacques Brel covers and hide in the dark, but as one of the biggest pop stars of the day, he simply wasn't allowed to fade away like that. Scott was also pretty lazy, and frequently he was quite content to be led into recording songs just because his team said they'd be good. But regardless of the material Scott was simply unable to give a bad performance. Even the flimsiest of songs turned into a dramatic affair once it was sung by Scott's majestic reverb drenched baritone. 

His first solo record, called simply Scott, was an odd mixture. There was the middle of the road crooner direction that his managers wanted to push him into (both the smooth Jack Jones, and the slightly sexier Tom Jones were suggested as role models for Scott, who simply shuddered at the thought), but there was also the edgier side of Scott, the side that relished the seedy drunken tales of Belgian writer Jacques Brel and he managed to get a handful of Brel songs onto each of his first three albums. Perhaps the more syrupy, middle aged, MOR material was the trade off for being allowed to release Brel songs...

Of the Brel tracks "Mathilde" is perhaps the easiest, a brash and stomping whirl of a track. "My Death" however is the opposite, tucked away at the end of side one after perhaps the most MOR track on the album. The cloying sentimentality of "When Joanna Loved Me" does nothing to prepare the listener for the existential angst of "My Death". Both this song and the album closer "Amsterdam" were borrowed by David Bowie who used them in his early 1970s live sets (and in remarkably similar arrangements too). Of the MOR standards that peppered the album, "Angelica" is the most impressive, partly because the lyrics aren't far from those that Scott himself was writing, and partly due to Reg Guest's beautiful arrangement. Tim Hardin's "Lady Came From Baltimore" hints at a folky / country direction that Scott would actually take up a few years later with decidedly mixed results, though this track is lovely.

But there was also a third element, one which, over the next few albums, gradually took over. Scott blossomed into a formidable songwriter in his own right. He'd already contributed a handful of startlingly good songs to the Walker Brothers, though their singles were always carefully picked 'safe' songs, rather than Scott's kitchen sink dramas. But now, on his own, he could bring these mini dramas to the fore. On Scott there are just three self penned tracks, but every one is a masterpiece. "Always Coming Back To You" is perhaps the slightest of the three, continuing the delicate sound of the Walkers' "Genevieve" written by Scott a year earlier. In amongst the delightful arrangement Scott sings his tale of loss with such understated emotion that it's genuinely heartbreaking. And the delivery of the line 'We'd find we'd missed our bus, so we'd laugh, kiss, what the hell...' brings a lump to my throat every time I hear it.

But it's "Montague Terrace (In Blue)" and especially "Such A Small Love" that cement Scott's reputation for writing hugely dramatic, heartbreakingly sad songs. In the former, the poetic lyrics (check out the graphically striking imagery of 'the window sees trees cry from cold, and claw the moon' for instance) illustrate the gulf between the reality and the dream home of a young couple. The orchestra is held in check on the delicately pretty verses but is unleashed in force on the yearning choruses - 'we'll dream won't we?' sings Scott with such passion and emotion. It's brilliantly arranged by Wally Stott and recorded with precise clarity by Johnny Franz, two men who were vital to the shape and sound of Scott's first few records. 

"Such A Small Love" is one of my all time favourite songs. It manages to mix drunken despair, longing and loss with utter euphoria and hope for the future in such a stunning manner that I'm left breathless every time I hear it. It is full of remarkable touches that carry the listener from the very first highly strung note of the violin to the giddy inebriated conclusion less than five minutes later. I think it's about a funeral and the devastating loss of a friend as the narrator has a rush of memories of the good times and looks forward to when the hurt will lessen. But ultimately the kaleidoscope of images are far more important that the precise meaning. The verses are underpinned by slightly eerie sustained strings, but as with "Montague Terrace" the choruses surge forward like a tidal wave of emotion and excitement. The confusion of imagery as the song actually speeds up towards it's conclusion is astonishing - 'midnight mornings drenched in dago red' mixes Scott's love of cheap Spanish wine with everyone's memories of mornings after the night before; 'drunken madmen nights, ending up in jail' hints at incredible adventures and brings us back to Scott's love of seedy romanticism. Musically this song is near perfect, but it's Scott's peerless delivery that makes this song absolutely perfect. The listener is completely swept along with Scott's evocation of euphoric carefree youth, and his sudden switch to regret and a sense of loss with the last lines of 'perfumed pillows of girls that clung so near, such a small love, such a little tear...' is heartbreaking beyond belief.

Scott's utter command of his voice is something all his collaborators have remarked upon over the years, yet it's something that Scott has generally dismissed. Scott seemed to think that making records and singing on stage ought to be much harder than he found it, and he frequently commented that he had little faith in his singing voice. He continued with singing lessons throughout the 1960s and often felt that others had better range and control. But what makes Scott stand high above most other singers is his effortless ability to inhabit every song, to bestow every track with a different emotion, to create a whole new world with every new vocal. 

While Scott is perhaps the most varied of his first four albums, it is also closest in sound to the Walker Brothers' records and betrays a cautiousness on the part of Scott's management to allow him to depart too far from a tried and tested (and clearly very successful) formula. As Scott's independence grew, so did his ability to project more of himself onto his records. Having said that, the self penned material (and by extension, the Brel songs) on Scott display a remarkable and unique talent, and in "Such A Small Love" we already have one of Scott's finest ever songs.

Scott 2 would follow fairly rapidly, but that's another story...

drifting and tilting

With the iPod on shuffle earlier I was treated to an amazing piece of music called "Clara". It's from Scott Walker's last album The Drift and is as far removed from the dreamy 60's sound of "Make It Easy On Yourself" as it's possible to be. Actually The Drift is about as far removed from ANY other sort of music as it's possible to be...

Anyway, it made me think back to the extraordinary evening I spent at the Barbican Theatre watching, experiencing Scott's songs back in 2008. This is what I wrote about it then. Can't really add anything to it now, apart from saying that I can't imagine ever topping that evening in terms of the sheer theatricality of what was presented and utterly astounding reaction it provoked in the theatre.

Drifting And Tilting –
The Songs Of Scott Walker
Barbican Theatre 14/11/08

Well it was certainly an experience. One that I’ve never had before, and I’m certain will never have again.
The performance was undoubtedly the oddest theatrical presentation I’ve ever witnessed and am ever likely to witness, and for the most part I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was full of jaw dropping moments – of which more later – and some stunning vocal performances. The staging and lighting was extraordinarily good, and the sound in the theatre was superb too.

The audience was comprised of plenty of people like me, some teenagers, and a large proportion of late middle aged women – almost certainly Scott devotees from the 1960s. I sincerely hope they’d been keeping up with Scott’s work over the past 30 years otherwise they’d have had a nasty shock! This was about as far you can get from the symphonic pop of "The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore" or the AOR rock of "No Regrets".

I took my seat, in the centre of the third row, and was confronted with a massive metal wall blocking the stage entirely. There was a projection onto the black metal – the words ‘Drifting And Tilting - The Songs Of Scott Walker’ moved randomly over the huge wall, as if the Mysterons were trying to contact us. 

Right on time, the wall divided with part of it folding down into the orchestra pit and the top half moving up into rafters. Down in the pit a full orchestra was assembled and on stage we were confronted with bare boards, a small band (drums, bass, guitar, keyboards, percussion) on a cramped riser in the centre at the back of the stage, hemmed in on both sides by what seemed like tall brick walls. Centre stage at the front was Jarvis Cocker – bearded, wearing a dark suit (and Kraftwerkian red shirt with black tie), standing reading a newspaper. "Cossacks Are" began, a row of spotlights at the back of the stage momentarily blazed out into our eyes (something that happened a few other times through the night) and Jarvis solemnly intoned the lyrics as if reading them from the paper. It was rather a shock to hear someone else singing Scott’s lyrics to be honest, and I’m not sure that Jarvis was entirely the right person for this song. He’s too much his own character. But the band was excellent, recreating the song perfectly, and Jarvis’ vocals were excellent on the ‘chorus’ parts where he sang unaccompanied "Cossacks are charging in…" etc. The opening number ended with the lights suddenly switched off and a lone drum beat continuing through the darkness. No one clapped (no one dared...) as the drum beat ominously continued.

Screens were dropped onto the stage, opaque to allow some light through, and projections to be used. Various screens would be used throughout the evening, to huge effect, and these represented some of the cleverest aspects of the staging.

Gavin Friday began singing "Jesse" – although perhaps a little histrionic, this was a very effective performance. The band and orchestra were phenomenal and a foreboding atmosphere permeated the whole theatre. Friday was in front of a screen which stretched from floor to ceiling. Behind him was a shadow of an Elvis-like figure. For a while the shadow copied Friday’s movements then, freakily, the shadow began to move independently. Then the shadow grew, gradually taller and taller until the figure filled the height of the screen. Obviously this was done with clever lighting but it was really quite eerie. Then the shadow morphed into a huge oblong, a coffin perhaps, or a grave… And at the end, the massive black rectangular shape divided into Twin Towers, as Friday sang without any backing, that he was the only one left alive - over and over, almost sobbing out the lyrics. Stunning performance, but even this was dwarfed by what came next.

Again, with no applause the stage changed in the darkness. The band was now shrouded by opaque curtains, an apparent dead body at the stage right, a woman lay contorted in the centre and ropes, looking like nooses, draped all around. A percussionist stood at the front beating time as "Clara" began. A suited man leaned over the body with an old fashioned movie camera. The ‘body’, opera singer Owen Gilhooly, sang most of the song like this – flat on his back pretending to be a corpse with his image, via the camera, projected onto a huge screen! Clara’s part was sung by Dot Allison from behind the drapes next to the band - she was excellent. And another opera singer, Nigel Richards, took some of the later lines. Throughout the song however, the contorted woman in the centre of the stage (as Clara) danced. Sometimes beautifully, sometimes as if in a trance, sometimes as if having some sort of fit and sometimes, brilliantly, as if she was hanging on the end of a rope. It was all most disconcerting, and at one point it seemed as if she was moving in reverse, as if film had been reversed – really astonishing, her movements were incredible, an amazing piece of choreography.

But most amazing of all was the pig thumping.

Hanging upside down by its feet, a pig carcass hung at stage left and a boxer, stripped to the waist, pummeled it. His boxing gloves must have had contact mics in them as the thumping and thudding was relayed through the PA as possibly the most disturbing percussion effect I’ve ever heard. It was all quite astonishing. When this started to happen there was an audible gasp from the audience. I had no idea this effect (which was of course used on the record) would actually be recreated on stage and I was genuinely stunned. It was fascinatingly horrid, but somehow entirely appropriate for the song.

Finally the song finished and once more the audience sat in silence. In fact no-one applauded at all until the very end of the evening. It was as if no-one wanted to puncture the oppressive atmosphere that had been carefully built up.

The next piece, "Patriot", took place on a bare stage again. A fat man wearing tights covered in butterflies, big y-fronts and a stocking over his head came waddling on stage. The audience was baffled by this weird appearance. He was played by actor Philip Herbert (possibly best known as Julian Clary’s cheery assistant Hugh Jelly) and he proceeded to mime what appeared to be the story of a drunk strangely chasing bit of newspaper which were ‘flown’ across the stage by puppeteers. As an accompaniment to "Patriot" I thought it seemed rather out of place despite being very entertaining and impressive. It was, in fact, the only bit of light relief all night. The flute and drums bit was played by masked musicians who stalked very slowly across the stage. Quite what they represented I have no idea. The music on this beautiful song was, as expected, very lovely indeed and a welcome respite from the previous two scary pieces. The vocals were beautifully handled, offstage, by the two opera singers Gilhooly and Richards.

But after this we moved into darker territory as a massive tree made from old wire coat hangers appeared in the middle of the stage. Dot Allison stood on its flat metal base to sing "Buzzers", which started with the radio snippets about Milosevic and then a man at the side of the stage began hitting some sort of metallic shape, creating the unsettling rhythmic dinging heard throughout the song. As the song progressed two dancers appeared from either side walking very slowly backwards across the width of the stage. They wore just loin cloths and their heads were covered by a sheet which lengthened into a long horizontal line of sheeting stretching across the whole stage. It was, again, very clever but rather disconcerting. Superb singing from Ms Allison.

Another screen dropped at the front of the stage as a grid like pattern was projected, almost like rows of windows. Nigel Richards appeared in a disheveled suit, torn, no shoes, looking like a vagrant, staggering around at the front of the stage whilst "Jolson And Jones" was pounded out, very loudly. He sang the bizarre lyrics like a man possessed, and for no obvious reason put a blindfold on himself halfway through. At times footage of booted feet walking very slowly down cellar steps was projected onto the screens. This, for some reason, was very ominous. And of course he sang of punching donkeys in the streets of Galway. Probably, out of all the songs, this was the hardest one to get through. The noise, the intensity of the singing was almost overwhelming.

"Cue" was next – an operatic / musical theatre singer called Michael Henry took centre stage with opaque screens in front of and behind him. What seemed to be fireflies darted all around him – it was entrancing - and these gradually coalesced into an eerie spectral mist which was very realistic. Very clever indeed. There was little other movement for the lengthy duration of this piece but it absolutely held your attention. What a superb singer he was, really powerful and emotionally affecting as he sang of the eerie flugelman and the awful disease he seems to bring. And then of course there were the ‘bam bam bam bam’ bits. At those points the band riser at the back of the stage was illuminated to show two huge wooden crates, behind which the two percussionists each held an enormous concrete block. They created the ‘bam bam bam bam’ with a massively loud echoing noise as they pounded the blocks onto the wooden boxes. One of the concrete blocks actually began to disintegrate during the last round of bashing and bits of concrete flew off in all directions. Terrific stuff – it was, unexpectedly, absolutely thrilling!

The final piece of this eighty minute performance was "Farmer In The City". Two men, in suits, stood at either side of the stage front, a screen with various Italianesque images (including a team photo of (I believe) the Lazio football team) behind them. They wore worrying masks with what seemed like soil faces and tall grass for hair. Quite disturbing looking, to be honest. 

As Gilhooly and Richards sang "Do I hear 21… 21… 21…." from offstage the brain-grass men mimed as if they were auctioneers, pointing weirdly into the audience. All very odd. Damon Albarn, wearing green wellies, took his place behind a lectern and sang the verses. He was surprisingly effective, and didn’t sing in his usual rather weedy voice at all. Still not as good as Scott of course, and I think I’d have preferred "Cue"s superb vocalist Michael Henry to have sung this one too, but on the whole Damon did a pretty fine job. The orchestral backing here was beautiful, powerful, deeply emotional. A really strong performance from everyone and a good choice as an almost triumphant final song.

The stage went dark, the audience was still silent, then all the screens went up to reveal the ‘cast’ in line taking bows, Jarvis and Damon in the middle. They all left and returned in pairs to receive even more applause, with the dancers getting a deservedly huge cheer and that was it. No sign of Scott on stage.

Scott Walker was there however, manning the sound desk at the back of the auditorium, a tall, thin man in jeans, t-shirt and blue baseball cap pulled down low. I knew it was him and after the performance noticed quite a few people getting autographs and shaking his hand. He seemed happy for this to happen, despite his reportedly reclusive nature, so I made my way back intending to meet The Man, but I got just two seats away before security ushered me, and a gaggle of middle aged ladies away, saying that the auditorium had to be cleared. Oh well.

It had been quite a night. A lot of people were impressed judging from the comments I heard. Annie Nightingale said to her companions that she’d never seen anything like it, many people were saying "wow" and variations thereof, but others were making comments of the "what a load of pretentious nonsense" variety. OK so it WAS pretentious – incredibly so – but so what? I wouldn’t have expected anything otherwise. The staging and attention to detail was incredible. The performances were first rate, and the music was astonishing – plus the sound in the theatre was crystal clear. In many respects I finally understood the songs whilst experiencing them live. A track like "Cue" had always dragged a bit on record, and was not one which I liked very much. Hearing / seeing it live has changed my opinion completely. Likewise "Clara" which was always impressive and probably the dark heart of The Drift album, but which seemed still more powerful live; more emotional, more expressive and I will always remember the incredible dancing. The Drift now seems like a much more complete piece of work to me, the themes more apparent after seeing this performance.

The press reviews have been rather ambivalent. Slightly grudging respect is the order of the day it seems. Clearly most of the reviewers were not fans of the recent Walker output, and most write as if they were not personally very impressed, whilst admitting that the show did contain an undeniable power and a sort of horrible beauty. They all, of course, focus on the pig punching and barely mention the more impressive and moving parts of the staging and singing, which ends up giving the impression that the evening was a bit of a freakshow. This is regrettable as the show wasn’t all that bizarre really. Avant garde maybe, pretentious yes, individual, totally original and utterly unique, yes yes yes! But it was way more than just the punching of a pig plus Jarvis and Damon popping up – which is the impression that most of the press reviews give.

The beautiful horror of Scott’s music and lyrics was brilliantly brought to vivid life and created memorable and astounding images which I, frankly, will never forget.
A truly remarkable evening.