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New Scott Walker album out December 3rd
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IanB
IanB
6761 posts

Edited Sep 25, 2012, 11:50
Re: New Scott Walker album out December 3rd
Sep 25, 2012, 08:41
Lawrence wrote:
Well I still like Scott Walker and I think his stuff is better than today's shallow pop-music. I don't know if his music says anything to me about my life, but it's infinitely more interesting and listenable than, say, overrated hipster crap like Jeff the Brotherhood (for example.)


(Jeff the Brotherhood? Who are they? I don't really try and keep up with new rock bands as there are not enough hours in the day. I have to rely on the kindness of strangers and on good records finding me these days. That has passed me by totally)

I mentioned Berg precisely because I think Walker wants to be thought of in that kind of company - Berg, Schoenberg, Webern, Schnittke etc etc.

When writing about grotesque human behaviour there is sometimes a genuine need for music that matches that ugliness and that is always going to be be a tough listening experience. Something like Wozzeck or Peter Grimes can be a very tough listen but the stories are completely clear. The musical dissonance is there to tell us about what is going on under the surface not to make things unnecessarily complicated for their own sake.

I found Drift dissonant and lyrically opaque for no apparent reason other than to eliminate any possibility of it being mistaken for pop. So what bugs me about SW's Art Rock records is that they seem obscure for obscurity's sake. Almost as if he wants anyone who likes him for the 60s stuff to run screaming just leaving a chin-stroking "gallery crowd". Especially lyrically.

What would be really wonderful is if he could write songs about alienation, despair and the horrors of torture etc in the context of great pop melodies and traditional structures. Like a 21st century Associates. Who else is even attempting that in 2012? Has anyone really done anything like that in the mainstream since the Holy Bible? That would be far more subversive than making hard to swallow art statements once in a blue moon.

Per my original post, there are a lot of greater writers and composers who already covered this kind ground in a way that is nigh on unassailable and a lot of them experienced those horrors first hand in WWI. They wrote what they saw and what they knew. What they saw and knew was not pretty so if the music they made was hard-going then it is no surprise. They didn't let that infect the way they used language. They weren't trying to alienate an audience (who would have been in deep shock whether post WW1 or WW2) and they were trying to express something to and on behalf of the audience as a whole. Lyrical obscurity would have been counter productive to the purpose of that music. That is the difference for me. It was important to be understood clearly.
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Re: New Scott Walker album out December 3rd (Lawrence)
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