Lost in the Grooves is a bi-weekly column where we revisit overlooked, underappreciated, and downright strange entries in artists’ back catalogues.
Scott Walker remains one of the most enigmatic and enduring songwriters of the last 60 years. His music, whose sound ranges from the digestible orchestral pop of his initial releases to the unclassifiable cacophony of his later work, has influenced everyone from David Bowie, Radiohead and Arctic Monkeys to Father John Misty. Despite his wide-ranging influence, his work remains hidden just beneath the surface, relegated to word-of-mouth transmissions and occasional lyrical name-drops.
While the entirety of Walker’s catalogue has generated a multitude of essays and deserves repeated deep dives and examinations, the final entry in his original run of four solo albums, aptly titled “Scott 4,” is perhaps the closest thing to a definitive Scott Walker record. Both digestible and impenetrable, “4” is both Walker at his zenith and the catalyst for a career that shattered any concepts about his artistic trajectory.
Some may argue that “Scott 4” is not the record to discuss in a column dedicated to obscurities hidden deep in an artist’s discography. Sure, any of his late-career albums like “Tilt,” “The Drift” or “Bish Bosch,” or even previous entries in his original run of solo records, are definitely more underrated, but, unless you are committed to a full tour of Walker’s career, “Scott 4” is arguably not only the best entry point, but the essential stop in getting a picture of Walker’s staggering genius. It would be a disservice to show anyone taking their first, and possibly only, leap into Walker’s music any other album.
Born Noel Scott Engel in Ohio in 1943, Walker found initial success in the UK in the mid-1960’s as a member of the Walker Brothers, a pop trio made up of men who were neither brothers nor any of whom had the surname Walker, before releasing three highly successful solo records from 1967 to 1969. Following up on the success of his solo venture, which transformed him into a pop idol, and an LP of performances from his short-lived TV show, less than a year after his previous album, Walker released “Scott 4” in late 1969.
Compared to his previous three solo records, “Scott 4” uses the orchestra less as the backbone of the album’s sound and more as additional color to fill in the gaps left by the otherwise simple folk-rock instrumentation. It’s also the first of Walker’s albums to feature no covers, notably lacking any songs by Belgian songwriter and actor Jacques Brel, whose music was a staple of Walker’s prior output.
On a first listen, the album may not come off as anything particularly special—nothing more than a curio of 1960’s pop; however, what makes “Scott 4,” and all of Walker’s music so captivating is his lyrics.
The record, perhaps more clearly than any of his other albums, reflects the esoteric assortment of Walker’s interests and obsessions that permeates his entire discography. You get songs about anything from 50’s European cinema, like opener “The Seventh Seal,” to tales of new fascist movements in “The Old Man’s Back Again (Dedicated to the Neo-Stalinist Regime).”
Then there are tracks like “Angels of Ashes” or, especially, “Boy Child,” whose vague, dreamlike imagery mixed with Walker’s croon induces a strange fugue state. His words are so evocative, yet still so abstract; you get glimpses of meaning and, all of a sudden, Walker inserts a phrase that completely shifts or even upends any concrete interpretation.
“Love catch these fragments / Swirling through the winds of night / What can it cost / To give a boy child back his sight / Extensions through dimensions / Leave you feeling cold and lame / Boy child mustn’t tremble / Cause he came without a name.”
“Scott 4” is also a great example of the lost art of a-side/b-side album formatting and how much song-sequencing can make or break records. Side A of the record consists entirely of ballads and gets more ethereal until concluding with “Boy Child.” Then, Side B, which has a more rock-oriented sound, kicks off with “Hero of the War,” a searing indictment of the Vietnam War, before leading into the funky “The Old Man’s Back Again,” injecting the album with a much-needed boost of energy.
The way Walker writes about historical and political events is unlike anything I’ve ever heard. On “The Old Man’s Back Again,” he carefully weaves between fact and fiction not only to personalize the tragedies at the song’s center but also to point to larger narratives surrounding evil and the romantic notions that infect it.
“And ‘entre vie,’ he cries / With eyes that ring like chimes / His anti-worlds go spinning through his head / He burns them in his dreams / For half awake, they may as well be dead.”
Later, on “The Drift,” he would take this style to dizzying extremes with “Clara,” where he describes the relationship between Benito Mussolini and his mistress Clara Petacci, who faced execution with him, mixing scenes of the couple at the Palazzo Venezia with imagery and sounds1 of crowds stoning the pair’s bodies.
Finally, I would be remiss not to mention “Duchess,” the most straightforward, yet still gorgeous and poetic song on the record. Again, Walker speaks with such specificity, but remains elusive in his descriptions of the woman at the center of the song. I can’t describe it in a way that does the song justice.
“It’s your bicycle bells and your Rembrandt swells / Your children alive and still breathing / It’s your look of loss when I’m coming across / Makes me feel like a thief when you’re bleeding.”
A critical success but commercial failure at release, “Scott 4” was the end of the burst of fame he saw in the 1960’s, and from which he would never quite recover. It wasn’t until the 1990’s that Walker began to get his flowers after groups like Pulp and Radiohead cited him as an influence, and 4AD signed him and began releasing his new music, freed from the constraints of having to write chart-topping records.
Despite running just over half an hour, “Scott 4” feels like an odyssey through Walker’s winding psyche. It’s a dense record, and can be a little overwhelming because of how fast it moves, but it’s the perfect middle-ground between Walker’s ornate, but sometimes impersonal, previous efforts and the avant-garde indecipherability of what came after. It’s truly gorgeous to listen to, and an underheard gem that influenced so many of the best and biggest artists we cherish today.
1 He had a percussionist punch slabs of pork for the song.
