it's one-listen wednesday!

okay, so i didn't get any local cds today, and we just ran a bunch of local cd reviews in the print edition, so i'm going to check out something else today. i'm listening to sunset rubdown, which is another project of spencer krug, he of the hysterical vocals for wolf parade. but, i started listening to it before i got to doing this, so we're going to pop out mr. krug and pop in scott walker.

scott walker
the drift
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scott walker is a dude i've heard a lot about. as a devout reader of british music magazine q in the late 90s, he got referenced left and right, although this is the first time i'm actually listening to him. whoa. weird.

apparently this record took seven years to make. mr. walker's got a strange voice. sounds a little like antony from antony and the johnsons. this special advance copy i've got here (full-length out on may 9) plays as one long track. the stated reason for this is that walker's ideal scenario for this record is to be heard all at once, but i suspect that foiling music piracy might have something to do with it. just an idea. this first track, "cossacks are," is also a little reminiscent of some of those more formless jeff buckley tracks from "sketches ..." based on the press materials, this guy is really somebody, plus he's 63. 63! there are some allusions to a past hit and walker's refusal to play the ageing rock star role. i guess that'd be a slam on the rolling stones, paul mccartney, take your pick.

this is a very empty record. the second track, "clara," is just walker's voice, some toms, and some keyboard. until some seriously giant strings come in. they sound a little like the music from "the shining." this is a good thing, i think, but also ridiculously over-the-top. to call this an acquired taste would probably be fair. it's peculiar to be listening to something with no referents when clearly you're meant to hear it in the context of all his previous work. try to imagine hearing the white album without knowing "i want to hold your hand." this album definitely has its sights set on similarly expansive and confrontational territory.

this is clearly the most pretentious press kit i've ever read. it's largely written by a guy named ian penman. an example: "Scott slips out the door of pop insanity (this is in 1967) and, running to escape the screaming both outside and inside his skull, like a boy in a myth, or a patsy assassin on the run, huddles inside a backstreet cinema ..." or there's this, from the part that actually talks about this album: "so let us start from scratch and paint a picture in the air: a dream, say, of the veldt at night where the locust chorus suddenly stops and the air sounds like threnody itself (threnody itself?) and cold lightning (cold lightning?) shoots across the sky like a whore exhaling crack (a whore?) and the death-coin Flugelman glides from hut to hut his midnight greeting like an infected kis ..." who is this guy? how can any music live up to that purple prose?

checking out wikipedia indicates that this guy is one of those peculiarly british (even though he was born in ohio) musicians who exert a stranglehold influence on a whole lot of bands that have never really broken through over here like pulp, julian cope, marc almond and the divine comedy. i'm getting the sense that i'm missing out on a lot just having it play on the boombox, so i'm switching to headphones.

apparently "jesse," the third song, was written about a month after the events of 9/11 and conflates the events with the story of elvis' still-born twin brother and is based around the drum pattern for "jailhouse rock" being replaced with whispered "pows" to represent planes hitting buildings. okay then. i'm beginning to think i need the cliffs notes version of this to guide me through it.

i find his refusal to give you a leg to stand on in terms of traditional song structure fascinating/frustrating, which i think is what he's after. "jesse," which i'm in the middle of right now, is basically just baritone guitar, vocals, and some super-ominous strings and sounds. i gather that he's done a lot string arranging, including writing the score to the 1999 film pola x. i'm right on the edge of feeling like this is all just too artsy, but i'm hanging in there. i'll be back shortly ...

there are some truly disturbing noises in "jolson + jones." kind of like a hippopatums being flayed alive. 41 minutes to go on this magnum opus.

now he's offering to punch a donkey in the streets of galway. i'm beginning to think i should have gone with eagles of death metal's death by sexy instead.

this is sounding more and more like a piece alvin lucier played us in intro to experimental music at wesleyan that was supposed to represent the music of the planets. it was very slow and very empty and quite ominous, based around the idea that big things moving very very fast actually look like they're moving quite slowly. add on top of that some very mannered torch singer-type vocals and the occasional sound of something being punched and that's what it's looking like 35:50 into the game.

this is music for people who find schoenberg "too pop." what happened, scott walker? in the 60s he was in the walker brothers and he even dallied with country and western music in the 70s. don't get me wrong, i admire him for the attempt, which, according to penman, i have to ("you MUST not dismiss the attempt"), but i think i'm going to have to pass on the second half of the drift. i'm just not finding anything particularly interesting going on, despite the attempt.

and thus concludes one-listen wednesday. what the hell is a flugelman? no, don't get up: apparently it's a leader, especially a political leader. now you can sleep at night again.