Best Scott Track on the Walker Brothers' 'Nite Flights'

it doesn't even make sense to me that anyone would like NF more than the Electrician.

The Shutout scored very low. I love the delivery and the line of "Something attacked the Earth last night"... MAkes me think of War of the Worlds.

Best Bon Scott Track on the Walker Brothers' 'Nite Flights'???

So what was the critical response to these monumental tracks when they came out? Did anyone here hear them when they came out? In hindsight they're not far out of step with emerging post-punk but I imagine at the time they seemed really odd.

Eno and Bowie definitely noticed.

Yeah, check the vocal/harmony vocal on "Look Back in Anger" for a start, however I'm pretty sure Scott had been listening to Bowie/Eno in turn. I stand by my longstanding assertion that the Gary Leeds' songs on this album are actually good, Scott plays on them for a start, but are sabotaged by Gary's inexcusable weedy voice

Glad 'Fat Mama Kick' got some votes here, I love that one, it's all about the effects on the vocals and that descending synth/bass hook.

Shocked at the placement of "Fat Mama Kick" (love the saxophone solo, nicely prefiguring Evan Parker's involvement on Climate). Thought it'd be neck-and-neck with "The Electrician."

Fat Mama Kick's the weakest of the four. It's not awful or anything, but I'm surprised it won level-pegging with the Shut Out which is maybe the funkiest thing he's done since The Old Man's Back Again

The Electrician > Fat Mama Kick > Nite Flights

I can't listen to Shut Out - too far into the late 70's kitsch spectrum and that lead guitar is just terrible - foreshadows similar atrocities on 'Climate...' where a number of potentially great songs are ruined by those dated elements... terrible 80's drum sounds, fretless bass, &c. Nite Flights is also a little too close to conventional disco but there's just enough strangeness in the arrangements to save it.

you're dead to me, whoever you are.

"Fat Mama Kick" is up there with anything on Tilt or The Drift. There, I said it. Gavin OTM re: vocal effects.

no it isn't.

Oh yeah, and Bronson was really good, Dwight Yorke.

you're dead to me, whoever you are.

Strangely, as a huge huge Scott Walker fan, I don't rate this record very highly. The spell is cast but the magic is lost.

Partially I think it's that peculiar proggy rhythm section sound that suits Soft Machine and other Canterbury bands so well? I don't like it here. And the orchestral arrangements are recorded so hot and bright, they sound too much like "here I am" instead of part of a landscape. They are written like hybridized and inferior versions of stuff from Scott 1-4. It's very clever but doesn't sound otherworldly the way that so much of Scott's other stuff does.

I appreciate this record as a precursor to Climate et al. but otherwise I have no love for anything here but "Fat Mama Kick" which totally rules. As Tarfumes said, it'd sit next to "Cossacks are" no problem.

I mean with "The Electrician", the contrast between the "It's raining today" chord and the ornate bridge + harp swells + Spanish guitar, it just sounds academic to my ears. The great thing about Climate onward is that despite its pretensions it always sounds so effortless and monolithic.

Even the less overt "avant garde" touches of "It's raining today" and "Big Louise", they worked to set the scene, you know? "The Electrician" just sounds like Dave MacRae lifting a couple of bars from "Lontano" with no intention but to Make Difficult Music

What's difficult about The Electrician?

Uh it's a single that begins with a dissonant string chord that lasts for a couple minutes, no?

Come on man, The Electrician is nothing short of amazeballs. You must be shrooming...

... I think he is. All in all, I prefer the material on here to "Climate of Hunter", though I like that album a lot (poll perhaps?).

Nite Flights is also a little too close to conventional disco

Uh, are you sure you've heard any disco?

(Love to have heard Scott, with or without the bros., tackling conventional disco btw!)

Actually, a remix of "Cossacks Are" for the disco would possibly be like Lennon/Ono's "Walking on thin ice"

The disco influence is what MAKES Nite Flights IMO. Scott possesses a surprisingly funky side he lets out on occasion (Man from Reno, Nite Flights, The Old Man's Back Again) and he totally rides it.

The Shut Out is great because
- that guitar sound is great. totally spindly and howling, works well with the atmosphere
- funkaholic bassline, overdriven guitars, an urgent nocturnal caper
- no idea what the words are about but it's the imagery what they conjure that makes the song: "Throw out those gimmicks to the boys", "how will we know the great doll?" (which I hear as "great dog" or "great door"), "Something attacked the Earth last night" - it all adds up to some immense apocalyptic urban invasion of some sort.

I like your posting style dog latin you are very generous! But: "funkaholic" :/

okay, maybe not funkaholic, but I am kind of a tweaker when it comes to two-step arpeggiated basslines like that.

I tried out Fat Mama Kick again last night - I see where you're coming from w/r/t pre-Climate Of Hunter but it feels really unformed, like half the production's missing and what's left is this vacuous down-home farty blues riff with Scott not really following the tune at all with his lyric. Maybe that's why people like it - it's plenty dissonant, avant-garde Drift-y, but I just don't hear it as being anywhere close to the quality of the other tracks.

This person must be one of those "rock instruments are corny!" newkids I've heard so much about.

Maybe that's why people like it - it's plenty dissonant, avant-garde Drift-y,

That's a large part of why I like it. But if it were all those things but poorly conceived/realized, I wouldn't like it at all. It's not the dissonance in and of itself that gets me; it's the dissonance in service to pummeling spookiness. I like that he doesn't follow the tune; we already know what he sounds like when he follows the tune.

"it's the notes he's NOT playing" ;-)

Partially I think it's that peculiar proggy rhythm section sound that suits Soft Machine and other Canterbury bands so well?

Are we listening to the same record? I don't hear that at all! I know Dave Macrae played with Matching Mole but he also played with the Goodies, I'm not saying that this closer to "Funky Gibbon" than Matching Mole but...

lol this is probably the record that's finally gonna get me into Scott stuff

also i like the non-Scott tracks

i haven't tried with the gary + john tracks in over 20 years

i remember the other book about scott, not deeper shade of blue but the shorter one with the challops, the guy was into the theory that the other tracks were basically also scott joints w/o scott singing - idk last time i listened they sounded more like failed attempts to poach the vibe of the scott tracks.

btw

the raw meat fist you choke

You mean 'No Regrets: Writings on Scott Walker'?

The Gary Leeds tracks sound like Scott is involved in them, beyond just playing on them, but the John tracks are terrible, stodgy AOR.

xpost no. single author. don't think i kept it. published around 98 or so. not bad actually just challopsy

Nite flights babe, it's always the same
Living the life, every night

Jerk the handle!

God, the Scott tracks are just perfect. Gateway drugs for sure.

I found the Shutout EP for either 50p or a pound in a house clearance shop among the usual dreck last year. Still in mild disbelief about that

Funkaholic bass notwithstanding, the secret to “Shut Out” is the double-time hihats.

As a title track voter, I wonder if the secret to its win here is that “The Electrician” is perhaps a smidgeon overly familiar – that it points more directly to his latter period (albeit in a more consonant way) where “Nite Flights” is a bit more of a road less traveled.

The lyrics on 'Shut Out' do that great thing where there's a lot of imagery but it doesn't really fit into a concise narrative. Your mind fills in the gaps. I love 'Something attacked the Earth last night'

Fatima Mansions version of "Nite Flights", far superior to Bowie's:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hB2gIEzoZsk

"Nite Flights" is the best Scott Track.

I think "Den Haague" and "Fury And The Fire" are great. Was very pleasantly surprised the 5-10 tracks weren't bad.

such great sci-fi/horror imagery in 'something attacked the earth last night' and 'how will we know the great doll?'. shades of Thomas Ligotti

realised I've never checked out the other tracks so I'm doing it now. so far Death of Romance isn't terrible

John's tracks are awful, and nothing and no-one will persuade otherwise.

I gave up at Rhythms of Vision

The main riff in "Fury and the Fire" is very Bowie-ish - the song as a whole is not much cop though.

The riff is definitely the best thing. Same with the keyboards in "Den Hague". Everything else about them doesn't spoil those riffs for me (can you call a piano/keyboard part a riff?)

I kinda hate that they so drunk or stoned or stupid they spelled it "Den Haague" tbh.