1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: 171. Scott Walker – Scott 4 (1969)

 

This album was, for some reason, released under Walker’s real name of Scott Engel and subsequently flopped, maybe because people didn’t realise it was him? It’s kind of more of the same as Scott 2 previously on this list, but minus the Jacques Brel influences, instead being entirely written by Walker. He eschews the more orchestral style as well, leaning somewhat into a more sparse arrangement.

That said, the track opens with the gloriously lush The Seventh Seal, wherein the plot of the Bergman film is given a soundtrack straight out of a Western, and oddly works very well, conjuring up images of stark and lonely landscapes. And isn’t the mysterious Man In Black archetype of many Westerns not just a version of Death? Or am I just thinking of Pale Rider? Sounds a little like Zager and Evans’ In The Year 2525 as well, which is something of a guilty pleasure.

This is probably for me the best track on the album, the other more interesting one being The Old Man’s Back Again, which is a polemic against the Stalinist regime that sounds a little bit like The Days of Pearly Spencer. The other tracks are fairly typical Scott Walker, with rich vocals and melodies that sound like they belong on a film soundtrack, but also often surprisingly dark for tracks that sound like easy listening. It’s only marginally different to Scott 2 to my ear, and I think I liked the wit of the Brel lyrics more on that one.