Scott Walker - Scott 2 (Scott 2 - Scott Walker)

Member Name: davepridd

Product:	Scott 2 - Scott Walker
Date:	12/09/00 (88 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Songwriting, variety of material, vocals, lyrics

Disadvantages: A bit too miserable sometimes

After the Walker Brothers broke up in 1967 Scott was very quick off the mark to establish his solo career, releasing the first of his 4 legendary solo albums in the same year. These albums allowed Scott to break away from the pop format of the Walker Brothers and share his apperciation for composers such as Jacques Brel, whilst at the same time developing his own songwriting skills. All 4 albums have their own highlights and are all very different in style, despite all being released within 3 years of each other. Scott 2 is my personal favorite and it is the only album which contains a hit single;'Jackie'.

The production is huge with orchestra on every track backing up Scott's vocals. The sound is quite unlike music in the charts today, but it is quite obvious which groups Scott Walker influenced with this album, most obviously The Divine Comedy, but also Pulp, Suede and Travis, and more indirectly, Saint Etienne.

The record is worth the money just to hear Scott's voice. It is very hard to describe, but I think he has probably one of the best male voices ever; he has a vast range and is able to sound rich, deep and expressive on every note, with no area sounding weaker than another. Each word sounds like it could go on forever. Therefore, anything that Scott Walker sings is going to sound fantastic but here the material matches the quality of his voice. The arrangements are much more complex than on modern pop records with every song making full use of the orchestra. The Jacques Brel songs ('Jackie', 'Next' and 'The girls and the dogs') do sound very French, but this just adds to the existentialist feel of the album where Scott ponders about all sorts of things in life, but with a melancholy air throughout, maybe trying to emphasis the existential view that life is absurd. It is of course, not a terribly uplifting album as even the uptempo songs do not treat terribly cheerful subject matter, but i
t is not as pessimistic as Scott 4 with it's 'I played chess with death yesterday'.

Although Scott went on to include more self-writen material on subsequent albums, the four Noel Scott Engel (his real name) compositions here are all very strong; 'Amorous Humphrey Plugg' as a great major key melody and 'Plastic Palace people' is very abstract for it's time, both musically and lyrically with some almost electronic sounds in the background. Even 'Girls from the streets', which is quite obviously trying to sound like Brel, sounds good.

The more MOR style numbers are not quite as good as the rest of the material here, but still allow Scott to show of his vocals very well. The mood of the album is probably best summed up in the 2 minute long Tim Hardin cover; 'Black sheep boy', although neither the lyric nor the melody are particularly downbeat, Scott still manages deeply unhappy.

So in conclusion, this is not an album to listen to to cheer yourself up, but it is still fantastic. It is worth remembering that Scott Walker's solo career has thusfar only produced 3 top 40 singles, but whatever music magazine you look in today, his name will be mentioned in reference to an album review or describing a new band.

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