Scott Walker "Bish Bosch"

2012 - the year experimental rock broke

Actual lyric, reportedly:

You're so fat when u go out in a rain jacket people mistake u for a cab

i donkey punch a ho in the streets of galway

xpost confirmed!

listening my way through the leak.

yes that just confirms to me that as much as i like scott his sense of humour is quite far from mine.

I've been listening to this while writing lecture notes; not the ideal way to do either thing, really. Hard to get a handle on it, but it's pretty extraordinary. The cab lyric is real, sounds fine in context.

I've severed my reeking gonads. Fed them to your shrunken face.

Just saying.

The line is actually:

You're so fat that when you wear a yellow raincoat people say "TAXI!"

But I heard it as:

You're so fat that when you wear a yellow raincoat people say "TAKE ME!"

Other good insults in the lyrics:

If brains were rain you'd surely be a desert.
If shit were music, you'd be a brass band.
Does your face hurt? Cos it's killing me!
Don't move, I want to forget you just the way you are.

I was trying to recall where that last one came from, or where I'd heard before, anyway.

The Monkees' "Head" film!

xp
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e2/Billy_Joel_-_Just_the_way_you_are.jpg

**SPOILERS**

this record contains simulated fart noises accompanied by lyrics about sphincters tooting.

thanks, that's gonna spoilers my dinners

Wire articles great. More PLAGUE vicar?

i swear on the wet head of my first case of gonorrhea that this is his best album since scott 4

Can't wait for the fart noises.

― LaMonte, Monday, September 24, 2012 8:17 PM (1 month ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

some truly amazing SONICS on this record. the machete sharpening/rolling on "corps de blah" is just WOW. i mean, so many amazing SOUNDS! really. but then he uses the same or a similar sound in Tar.

i don't know if it all hangs together or if it's meant to or if it should. I was rereading The Drift thread and Julio's criticism of that record applies here too. "It does many things in a 'samey' manner...its going for a consistency in mood, but at the same time he undermines this by throwing the odd humourous line" - apologies for referencing his observations AGAIN but they do cut to the heart of the matter, imo. Apart from 'See You Don't Bump His Head' and "Epizootics!", a couple of others, everything seems pretty much interchangeable, could be part of any other track. Again, this is probably the intention )a song-suite) but over a sustained period (the length of a CD) it sounds like a multitude of sonic ideas ultimately sounding the same. Would i know that "SDSS14+13B" had ended and "Epizootics!" had started if i had not already heard "Epizootics!"? if so does it matter? "you're so boring you can't even entertain doubt" is a great line but i don't know if it has any meaning or interest to me beyond being clever and funny. other lines in the same vein aren't even funny (to me). maybe that's the point too? i don't know and i'm confused by it.

but it IS fascinating, a window into a very singular mind. whether that's a cause to revisit it more than a couple of times remains to be seen. sometimes i really want to listen to "farmer in the city" or "patriot (a single)" or "clara" but i can't imagine having that impulse with any of these tracks, songs, "pieces" or whatever you cry them.

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