Scott Walker "Bish Bosch"

When Tilt came out all I wanted to hear was Climate of Hunter. When The Drift came out, I was all over Tilt. Now this new one has me crooning 'Cossacks Are' as I walk down the street.

All of these records seemed verging on self-parody to me on first listen. They genuinely do take years to sink in and become enjoyable music... that's how I see it at least.

Any time there's Donald Duck or Farting Noise there's a tendency in all of us to go "Scott, You've Gone To Far This Time"

this is such an amazing record. prefer it to The Drift already. plus its very funny.

Can we get Sissy Spacek onto that one? (xpost)

Rainbo iirc

"They genuinely do take years to sink in and become enjoyable music... that's how I see it at least."

life's too short.

also, almost every "difficult" record will sinh in after some years.

i'm finding this very enjoyable from second listen onwards.

I got into this one way more quickly than The Drift or Tilt, enjoyed it on the first listen and have grown to like it even more on subsequent listens. I guess it helps that I listened to epizootics! about 5-6 times before the album leaked.

I'm probably listening to this album too much. It's weird to have music like this stuck in my head.

Odd that he's using these slighty hackneyed lines like "There but for the grace of God goes God". Mind you, Stafford Cripps is not referenced nearly enough by younger artists, if you ask me.

So. Had a chance to interview him. Will let you know when it runs. Sadly was done by email rather than phone but you can't have everything.

Still must've given you chills to receive an e-mail!

BrelDu✧✧✧@a✧✧.c✧✧

dammit, forgot about that

Hahah

Wow that is awesome Ned
I can't actually think of anything to ask him except I'd probably urge him at age 80 to go back and listen to the records he's made and wallow in self-pride for a day

Hahaha. He had some great, thoughtful answers. There's one in particular that's a throwaway bit that's pretty damn funny.

David Toop interview with him for Pitchfork:
http://pitchfork.com/features/interviews/9003-scott-walker/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012/nov/23/scott-walker-interview?INTCMP=SRCH

Went to Universal News in manhattan the other day but The Wire was a Brotzmann cover-- did I miss the Scott issue or is it not on US stands yet?

The Scott one will be the next one up after old Brötzy

Ha, that's who got the Pitchfork interview! I pitched to do that but it had already been claimed -- good choice for sure.

yes that's a good interview. i think i was completely wrong upthread about this record and i'm very pleased to say that.

The Guardian guy gets some facts wrong but nonetheless conducts a pretty great interview.

I'm refusing to hear any of Bish Bosch until I can have the CD, and I gather there's a lot of gallows hilarity on this one, but this particular lyric quoted in that article sent shivers down my spine:

"Earth's hoary/fontanelle/weeps softly/for a/thumb thrust"

I gather there's a lot of gallows hilarity on this one

Understatement.

impressive lack of dropoff for album tracks (esp after SDSS14), per last.fm

1 'See You Don't Bump His Head' 1,171
2 Corps De Blah 1,062
3 Phrasing 989
4 SDSS14+13B (Zercon, A Flagpole Sitter) 873
5 Epizootics! 867
6 Dimple 778
7 Tar 756
8 Pilgrim 745
9 The Day the "Conducator" Died (An Xmas Song) 688

there were no moors in the fifth century

http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/17387-bish-bosch/

oh, but that's just a joke, right? it's almost like this review proves the other side of the argument it's trying to make about artistic and intellectual ambition

i deeply dislike the 'reviewer voice' tone of that kind of music writing

that's one nasty 8.0 review. jesus.

all you need to know about that reviewer is that he thinks scott walker is the david lynch of music

who would have thought Pitchfork would have written an awful review of this, really
this doesn't read like "8.0" at all

is 69 middle-aged in pitchfork-land? does that website even have any editors?

mr. pitchfork's thoughts on scott walker and the avant-garde remind me of a tea partier talking about barack obama and socialism

He's essentially going for an Emperor's New Clothes approach here, but makes a really bad case for it. There is hyperbole surrounding Walker and this release, true, and often he gets pedestalised as this purely original, utterly unique musician with a single vision and blahblah... But I don't think even his greatest fans would argue he doesn't have a huge number of influences guiding him, from Brel to Sibelius to, well, I bet the guy listens to hip-hop - all the old troll-codgers do. So this "don't be fooled by this faux avant garde bollocks" stance doesn't hold water because while he might not comfortably fit into that category, there's no one on the current "pop" landscape using these influences and taking these risks.

I can imagine the 8.0 marking was an editorial decision.

lol haven't read the review yet but powell's one of the great regular pitchfork dudes, guy navigates complicated reactions to things better than almost anyone i can think of on staff right now (tim would be the other that comes immediately to mind). his review of the philip glass remix thing is one of the best i've read recently

if that's the best pitchfork can do these days, oh boy

Why has the Graun reviewed this twice?

Petridis' is the Guardian review, Kitty Empire's is the Observer one.

When I was up in Scotland I noticed this got reviewed (fairly positively too) in the Daily Record, that's the Scottish equivalent of the Mirror - that 60s crooner fame is awfully persistent.

OK wait this is actually in US stores today? I thought US would lag a couple of weeks behind UK?

haven't listened to this yet because i had to pick between this and kesha and picked kesha

psst psst

goddammit so tempted to go to other music on my lunch break but that's a long-ass lunch break.

i will go to reckless as soon as i'm not broke as fuck

if anyone has mog, it's streaming on there in full.

Can't bear to stream this one. Need full spectrum for my boy Scott.

Haven't really had the chance to listen to it yet but one thing i must say is that the packaging for this thing is just fucking tremendous, size limitations of the CD format aside. If you were thinking of skipping the physical version, DON'T DO IT!

I have to wait till Xmas as I've asked for the vinyl... I feel like I'm about 6 y/o with all the Christmassy excitement

http://beardrock.com/reviews/scott-walker

"The centre of the album is "SDSS1416+13B (Zercon, A Flagpole Sitter)", the closest that the album gets to traditional coherence and also it's most difficult piece - a twenty minute musical story about a time-travelling dwarf, born in the fifth century, who eventually becomes a dwarf star (the SDSS1416+13B of the title) and dies. Yep."

Stopped at Earwax on the way home. They sold out of the CD.

SFJ piece in this week's New Yorker. Just snuck a read of the first page in the bathroom at work. He tells SFJ that he generally composes (after creating the lyrics) at a keyboard which translates what he's playing into score. Don't think I'd heard that before.