I pretty much assumed that this album would be my automatic BEST OF DECADE just based on the trailer + "Epizootics!" & the fact that I'm a massive scott stan (listened to the drift nearly every day for like a year after it came out). And then the release date came & I heard it and I just couldn't help feeling deflated, like yeah this is brilliant but none of the songs really get to me the way eg "clara" or "farmer in the city" do.
Happily I'm revising this position & now think that "zercon" especially is one of the most affecting things he's done. The central metaphor, though oblique, is just so elegant & moving: zercon moving to higher & higher peaks (across multiple eras/spaces) in order to escape his circumstances, but of course he can't, and even when he ascends to space he's still a dwarf and the universe is still cold & cruel & unfeeling - Walker's said in interviews that at the beginning of the song zercon is getting "heckled by silence", which is some kinda bergman-level angst right there. At its core it's not a zillion miles away from the 60s character pieces - poor zercon, like big louise, is looking for (fire) escapes in the sky.
I mean I wouldn't really claim to know what's ~going on~ in the song at all times but it seems to be "about" different kinds of human cruelty & the ways people have of coping with them. Hence the many references to past racisms &c. Zercon's defensive strategy against the society that treats him like shit is to give as good as he gets (all the classic putdowns at the start of the song); later, he just withdraws & withdraws until there's nothing left & he "drop[s] into the darkness" (this is how you disappear). The responses to heckles in the last part of the song aren't randomly chosen, they all point towards complete effacement: "I want to forget you just the way you are", "I think you've got nothing there","I hope your face clears up".
This is why I can't get with complaints about the humour - even the funny lines on this album aren't just there for the lolz. Plus there's always been humour in scott's work - on the drift he actually bursts out laughing ffs!
― castle grayscale (wins), Thursday, 31 January 2013 23:41 (eleven years ago) link
Brilliant post wins
― dog latin, Friday, 1 February 2013 01:09 (eleven years ago) link
Another thought I had:
ROOMFULLAMICEROOMFULLAMICEROOMFULLAMICEROOMFULLAMICE
― ☯ t (wins), Thursday, 7 February 2013 00:49 (eleven years ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=6AjaS1adwk8
I laughed.
― On Being Blue (Da Ba Dee): A Philosophical Inquiry (wins), Monday, 11 February 2013 23:19 (eleven years ago) link
Hmm!
http://pitchfork.com/news/50048-scott-walkers-bish-bosch-becoming-multimedia-show-for-vivid-sydney-festival/
― Ned Raggett, Thursday, 21 March 2013 15:49 (eleven years ago) link
The Alfredo Garcia cameo in "Epizootics!" makes me very happy altho I have no idea what it's doing there
― castle grayscale (wins), Thursday, 31 January 2013 22:55 (1 month ago) Permalink
Garcia also gets a mention in Cockfighter on Tilt.
― Zelda Zonk, Friday, 22 March 2013 01:05 (eleven years ago) link
"eccentric, asburd"
― ma ck ro ma ck ro (mackro mackro), Friday, 22 March 2013 13:40 (eleven years ago) link
still playing this. Also
Another thought I had:ROOMFULLAMICEROOMFULLAMICEROOMFULLAMICEROOMFULLAMICE― ☯ t (wins), Thursday, 7 February 2013 00:49 (2 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
― ☯ t (wins), Thursday, 7 February 2013 00:49 (2 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
me otm, although that may be the "jazz police" of this album
― "LOL is other people" - Jean-Paul Snarktre (wins), Tuesday, 16 April 2013 21:43 (eleven years ago) link
Some video of the Bish Bosch thingie at the Sydney Opera house:
http://youtu.be/M6gowakwh8A
looks neat!
― mr.raffles, Wednesday, 29 May 2013 13:01 (ten years ago) link
Really hope they do this in the UK. The Sydney opera house thing is free to attend! Any ilxors going?
― too busy s1ockin' on my 乒乓 (wins), Wednesday, 29 May 2013 13:13 (ten years ago) link
Contrast and compare:
"Take that accidentally in the bollocks for a start", Scott Walker, 'Epizootics!', 2012
"'ere, get this in the bollocks for a start!", Derek & Clive, 'You Cunt', 1976
― Tommy McTommy (Tom D.), Friday, 12 July 2013 09:58 (ten years ago) link
It's all in the detais. Gary Barlow would not have made it so big in a boy band called "Ere, Get this"
― Mark G, Friday, 12 July 2013 11:43 (ten years ago) link
?????
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7zXriGjAiM
― Stop the tape I got spittle all over my moustache. (Talcum Mucker), Saturday, 3 August 2013 08:45 (ten years ago) link
"I don't come to where you work and punch your donkey on the streets of Galway."
― 5-Hour Enmity (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Friday, October 5, 2012 3:54 PM (1 year ago)
this might be the most i've ever laughed at a post on ILM. jus sayin.
― piscesx, Saturday, 16 November 2013 02:40 (ten years ago) link
i don't think there's been a point this year where I haven't had this album on some sort of rotation and i'm still noticing new things about it.
― a beef supreme (dog latin), Tuesday, 3 December 2013 12:44 (ten years ago) link
...such as?
― Gerald McBoing-Boing, Tuesday, 3 December 2013 14:20 (ten years ago) link
mostly just little details, layers, a vocal section that i'd not really noticed before. really these albums are such a rollercoaster at first that you don't really take in the scenery - it's all hair-raising twists and turns etc.
― a beef supreme (dog latin), Tuesday, 3 December 2013 14:32 (ten years ago) link
gtfo
― Rong Male (wins), Tuesday, 3 December 2013 14:33 (ten years ago) link
hell i still hear shit in "next" i never noticed before
― reggie (qualmsley), Tuesday, 3 December 2013 15:44 (ten years ago) link
records
― From the Album No Baby for You! (Matt P), Tuesday, 3 December 2013 16:03 (ten years ago) link
to play fugues on jove's spam castanets
― reggie (qualmsley), Tuesday, 3 December 2013 16:06 (ten years ago) link
hell i still hear shit in "next" i never noticed before― reggie (qualmsley), Tuesday, December 3, 2013 3:44 PM (23 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
― reggie (qualmsley), Tuesday, December 3, 2013 3:44 PM (23 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
it just took me this long to realise you weren't talking about the clothes and homes store, Next.
― a beef supreme (dog latin), Tuesday, 3 December 2013 16:08 (ten years ago) link
only stores i talk about are aldi and supreme clientele
― reggie (qualmsley), Tuesday, 3 December 2013 16:19 (ten years ago) link
all the naked and the dead should hold each other's hands and watch me scream at night in a dream no one can understand
― reggie (qualmsley), Wednesday, 4 December 2013 02:18 (ten years ago) link
Always found the imagery on Next too disturbing for comfort, but I just read the lyrics for the first time and boy, it gets pretty Boschian by the end dunnit?
― a beef supreme (dog latin), Wednesday, 4 December 2013 09:09 (ten years ago) link
Alex Harvey's take on "Next" annihilates Scotty's version tbh
― Saturated with working class intelligence and not afraid to show it (Tom D.), Wednesday, 4 December 2013 09:11 (ten years ago) link
wow i call ppl bish
― dude-icrous (color definition point of "beyond "color, eg a transient that), Wednesday, 4 December 2013 09:34 (ten years ago) link
Still great. Sometimes it's my favourite.
― wank-bond-villain-looking villain, (dog latin), Monday, 10 March 2014 15:29 (ten years ago) link
... definitely not mine. Just finished one of my periodic attempts to listen to this thing in one sitting and, though it gets easier as it goes along, it's still a chore. I think my main problem is the vocals, which are so loud and monotonous and, too often, give the impression of being plonked on top of the music willy nilly - I'm pretty certain they weren't btw!
― Bridge Over Thorley Waters (Tom D.), Sunday, 29 March 2020 15:22 (four years ago) link
As poetry this album is fantastic. As music, I think it ploughs the same furrow as The Drift to much lesser effect. At first it seemed cool, I think that for a lot of fans, the initial magic of getting a new Scott Walker release rubbed off pretty fast. In retrospect, Walker's managing to release a very musically different follow-up (Soused) less than two years later saved him from what might have been a dip in his reputation.
I wonder what the truth is to rumours that Walker had recorded new music before his death, including the songs whose lyrics are included at the end of the Faber & Faber Sundog collection.
― Melomane, Sunday, 29 March 2020 15:27 (four years ago) link
I feel like I couldn't hear the music behind the voice tbh.
― Bridge Over Thorley Waters (Tom D.), Sunday, 29 March 2020 15:28 (four years ago) link
one of which had a “rap” section iirc xp
― Microbes oft teem (wins), Sunday, 29 March 2020 15:28 (four years ago) link
With a bit of distance I'd say the highs of this album (namely 'Epizootics!' and 'Zercon') outweigh the highs of his other albums in terms of ambition and pizzazzle. It's also his most darkly humorous album. Drift is a more sustained listen. Tilt, especially the second side, is the album I go back to more.
― doorstep jetski (dog latin), Monday, 30 March 2020 14:14 (four years ago) link