"See You DonÕt Bump His HeadÓ is one of the titles on Scott WalkerÕs
new album. It probably has nothing to do with something having happened to Walker himself. Probably.
But WalkerÕs music can seem disturbed, and it is always disturbing, as is this abstruse persona of his.
WalkerÕs Bish Bosch is on the surface a weird experience, weird in the scary sense, yes, though itÕs weird in a bleakly, terribly funny way as well. Scott Walker likes to be scary and weird, though his art, apparently, is not intended to merely weird one out.
You could say itÕs long been this way with Walker, or you
could say itÕs a more recent development. In the Ô60s he was a big pop star, with the Walker Brothers
(ÒThe Son AinÕt Gonna Shine AnymoreÓ); then he went solo and segued ever more obscurely into a
phase as an avantly alternative lounge artiste warbling opulently orchestrated Jacques Brel covers,
and then more and more tilted art-pop records through the Õ70s and Ô80s. Our first hint that
something off was afoot was an opening set of gloomy, murkily faraway songs on the final Walker
Brothers album, 1978's Nite Flights; something was happening to the man, and whatever
it was manifested itself again on the post-punky medievalist art-whatsit of Climate of Hunter (1984).
There came a longish break (during whichÉ?) out of the spotlight, then Walker re-emerged with 1995's
Tilt and 2006's The Drift, two very abstract, profoundly difficult and utterly enthralling documents ofÉof what?
The Drift gave off the distinctively blurry vibe of someone who long ago gave up the ghost and headed for Gomorrah. Amid a worrisome mass of bleak-house strings, tornado-cometh guitars and electronic shred and whir, Walker coughed and staggered forward again, down a hallway of his, perhaps, horrific life. Walker, compelled to turn the corner into the darkest, dankest rooms, crooned in a cracked sort of way. He croaked and wheezed as if in complete loss of control. This effect was in part masterful acting and musicianship. Walker was inventing a musical language, as if to start wholly from scratch, as if it could be done only this way ÐÐ considering all thatÕs happened.
WalkerÕs sound design/structures on The Drift were an
all-embracing but tradition-rejecting total-music whose most similar forebear could be John CaleÕs
production work on NicoÕs The Marble Index and Desertshore albums, where vast,
impenetrable clouds of ÒdissonantÓ string chords, electric guitars retching and suffering brutal
contractions in odd tunings, fearful evanescent spirit voices (our own) and altogether unidentifiable
skewerings of sonority mixed not just for depth but for crosstalk, feedback and transparency. For Walker that transparency was a necessary effect, as his horror storiesÕ protagonist/observer passed through the music like a ghost would wander through walls, from one dusty, cold room to another.
Bish Bosch is somehow a much better-humored work than
The Drift, as if Walker has Òcome to terms withÓ a portion of the old deviltry that has plagued
his complex self for all these many years (apparently). Spilling over like a creepy old box of toys with
jarring/cacophonous orchestral shards, abrasive metallic guitar slashes, curdling synth whirrs and
percussive knife-sharpening sounds, Bish Bosch is: ugly, ambitious, sprawling, perplexing, humorous, ambiguous. WalkerÕs allusive lyrics quick-cut, hybridize, play with and explore art history, literature, physics, psychology and poesy itself; here are a few more song titles: ÒCorps De Blah,Ó ÒSDSS14 13B (Zercon, A Flagpole Sitter),Ó ÒDimple,Ó ÒTar,Ó ÒThe Day The ÔConducatorÕ DiedÓ ÐÐ a booklet accompanies the album if you wish to study his unique new lyrical structures.
The California-born Scott WalkerÕs mind is like a Mayan maze; you can wonder if thereÕll be anyone at home when you finally reach the mazeÕs center, if indeed you ever do, which is doubtful. You will have heard music along the way, however: perplexing, grotesque, menacing, exhilarating, mysterious, sad, threatening, impenetrable, psychologically wracking music. Thrilling music. Not pop music as such, but just imagine a world in which it could be termed like that. A Scott Walker world. Different. Very, very different.
