#54 Scott Walker- Scott 2

For a brief moment, it was Scott’s world and we were just living in it…

(Philips)

Released: April 5^th 1968

Producer: John Franz

Topped the chart:

12^th May 1968 (for 1 week)

1 week total

Scoot 2 is an odd record from 1968. With psychedelia taking darker turns, all fuzz and atonal guitars, here comes one of the Walker Brothers making arch chamber pop that sounds like Mike Flowers Pop covering The Divine Comedy. Also included: songs about “Spanish bums” and gonorrhoea.

Quite 1968 then actually, as it turns out.

Either way, there was precedent for Walker’s oddball choices after his success with the “British” group The Walker Brothers- not British, not brothers and none actually called Walker- who notched a string of top 20 singles in the mid-60s, including two number ones.  Marketed as an update of the Everly Brothers, drenched in Phil Spector-esque wall of sound production and intense vocal harmonies, their sound was a little askew and mannered, which allowed them to stand out.

After the band went their separate ways, Scott Walker emphasised the weird angles and strangeness into something different. Walker observes the world with an arched eyebrow in both senses of the word, feigning wry amusement in many of the songs and signing on subjects not previously found on a pop record. On first listen, the songs sound a lot like the easy listening of Andy Williams or Val Doonican (there’s even an accordion on The Girls from the Streets) , but it’s the influence of Belgian chanson singer-songwriter Jacques Brel that sets it apart, with Walker covering  three of his songs here. They stand as the strangest offerings: Jackie was a minor hit as a single, and it’s hard to imagine how a song with the word “ass” repeated several times (heavens!) managed to land on the charts in 1968, but here we are. Next is even odder in its translation, its main character finding themselves “in a mobile army whorehouse” where “a naked body followed me.” In essence…very French, and it matches Walker’s style of almost taking the piss- there’s a fine line between parody and pastiche, it turns out.

The Brel songs haven’t all dated brilliantly…one gets the sense that the homophobic slurs on Next weren’t meant with malice at the time, but the same can’t be said of The Girls and the Dogs, a song which debates which one of those two really is man’s best friends, and, spoiler alert, women do not come out on top of that one.

Walker populates his own songwriting efforts with odd characters of is own, but he delivers them with such conviction that he clearly rather favours the outsider. Brilliantly-titled The Amorous Humphrey Plugg dives into the fantasies of a bored family man, walking the streets pretending to be some great Cassanova, passing women “seductive as sin in their eyes,” taking a surreal turn into “cellophane sighs.” Humphrey should be pathetic, but the backing is so sweepingly romantic that you almost want to give him a hug. Plastic Palace People is much stranger and harder to define but no less beguiling, stringing together images and memories of childhood with an overall feeling of disappointment. Ascending and descending string arpeggios set the uneasy mood of the verses, pulling back to reality in the more straightforward chorus. It certainly isn’t a pop hit, but its shifting sands certainly draw you in.

Towards the end of the record, the songs feel more standardised and the mood morose. Windows of the World, The Bridge and Come Next Spring are all gorgeous, but when stacked next to each other at the end of the record makes it feel like the album drifts away rather than builds to a climax. It’s never a feeling that dominates, but it does start to feel that right at the end, the style is starting to wear out its welcome, and the strangeness is missed.

Despite its singular week at number one, Scott 2 and it’s various sequels have proved hugely influential in the decades since. His view askance at oddballs on the likes of Humphrey Plugg basically invented Jarvis Cocker a decade later, while his take on Jacques Brel dark humour has encouraged cynical outsiders like Nick Cave and Father John Misty through to the pure bum-shaking orchestral pop of Neil Hannon.

Between Walker Brothers reunions, Scott would push further into experimentation and defiance, his popularity waning to the point of obscurity until being reclaimed through the 90s and 2000s. But for one night only, Scott 2 gave its creator his flowers, and thank goodness for that.    

Score: 8/10

Tracklisting:

SIDE A

1.      Jackie

2.      Best of Both Worlds

3.      Black Sheep Boy

4.      The Amorous Humphrey Plugg

5.      Next

6.      The Girls from the Streets

SIDE B

7.      Plastic Palace People

8.      Wait Until Dark

9.      The Girls and the Dogs

10.  Windows of the World

11.  The Bridge

12.  Come Next Spring