NP: Scott Walker

[Henry]

Did anyone see this movie?  "Make It Easy on Yourself" and "The Sun Ain't
Gonna Shine Anymore" were great "blue-eyed soul" hits in the 60's, but how's
his post-pop stuff?

'SCOTT WALKER: 30 CENTURY MAN' review in NYT today:
http://movies.nytimes.com/2008/12/17/movies/17scot.html?8mu&emc=mua1 
"Even then, Mr. Walker says, his interests extended well beyond pop to Beat
literature and European films, especially those of Ingmar Bergman; musically
he was drawn to darker, moodier sounds than mainstream pop permitted. The
solo albums he recorded after he left the group featured songs by Jacques
Brel, the impassioned Flemish singer-songwriter who was as catalytic an
influence on Mr. Walker as Bob Dylan was on many of his peers. 

Although "30 Century Man" covers Mr. Walker's teen-idol years, it is far
more interested in his later evolution into a guru of experimental pop,
admired by the likes of David Bowie (the movie's executive producer), Brian
Eno, Radiohead, Sting and Jarvis Cocker of the British band Pulp. Mr. Kijak
harbors special affection for Mr. Walker's 1969 solo album, "Scott 4." His
first collection of all-original songs, this alleged masterpiece was also
his first commercial failure. At that time Mr. Walker's voice, a beautifully
polished pop baritone, suggested a hybrid of Tom Jones and Jim Morrison but
with a spooky, quivering vibrato. 

Once Mr. Walker shucked off conventional pop forms to write increasingly
compressed poetic lyrics and to invent sounds that, in the words of one
talking head, deliberately blurred "the boundary between chords and
discords," the mood of cosmic desolation that had always lurked in his
singing came to the fore. Today he sounds a little like Bryan Ferry or Mr.
Bowie (in his ghoulish mode) as the singing narrator of a psychological
horror film."

http://tinyurl.com/scottwalker-on-amazon 


Henry Mu