Scott Walker
Scott 4

Many of those who love Scott Walker owe their affection to his more "dark", claustrophobic period, a judgment, or rather attitude and inclination, that I can somewhat agree with, since "The Drift" (2006) can indeed be considered the most accomplished album in terms of atmospheres and rhythms, skillfully pared down, according to a minimalism that gives strength to the voice and words of the artist, dubbed as British though he’s American.
However, I find that a mere, albeit plausible distinction between a "first" and a "second" Walker risks creating a misleading narrative, suggesting an artist limited to pop first and inclined towards experimentation later. In reality, his entire career, on a first, second, or tenth listen (for the die-hard fans), emerges as an undeniable manifestation of avant-garde elements.
From the first four LPs as a solo artist (thus excluding works with the Walker Brothers, a band of fictional brothers where covers prevailed), which are marked progressively with a number but are essentially eponymous, to his latest projects functioning as OST ("The Childhood of a Leader", 2016, and "Vox Lux", 2018), Noel Scott Engel immerses his content in a heterogeneous solution, containing accessible elements on one side, and elusive, challenging ones on the other, in more or less equal measures. Initially, the former prevails over the latter, giving the impression of dealing with products designed to be consumed primarily, due to a historical period where the contamination between symphonic and pop, exemplified by Phil Spector's technical innovations, is brought to market to create a sensation, through polished hybridizations between light music and classical. Furthermore, Walker, well integrated into the reference context, draws much inspiration from Broadway musicals and especially from the French chanson of Jacques Brel and Leo Ferré, two eminent chanteurs who blend authorship with a format good for the market. Another important composer in this regard, at least as a melody writer, is Burt Bacharach.

Already starting from the final chapter of the tetralogy of "Scott", "4", which is the subject of this review, the artist's intentions become more adventurous, the cultural background of the man Walker enriches, and the tools available at the conceptual level increase. Artistic maturation materializes substantially at this point in the journey: it is 1969, and the 26-year-old from Hamilton, Ohio, based in London, records at the Olympic Studios in the English capital the tracks that will form the new fully self-written LP. No more covers, only songs written by his own hand. He decides to sign everything with his birth name, Scott Engel, and this is the main reason many will attribute as the origin of the singer's surprising commercial failure, who until then had been constantly favored by media fortune: "Scott 4" does not climb the sales charts, remains low for some time, and then is completely ousted.
Whether the flop is influenced more by formal reasons (different name, and total authorship of the material) or more complex sonic/lyrical elements matters little. Everything about "Scott 4" speaks volumes about the sincerity and creative intelligence of its author. A masterpiece without "ifs" and "buts", contrary to the previous releases, which, although presenting artistically dignified and often moving material, lack conceptual coherence and a certain weight in authorship and melody, "4" perfectly combines instrumentation belonging to the orchestral tradition, acoustic instruments and/or related to rock, and rhythmic setup.
The sound continues to be baroque, but of a baroque stripped of many of its embellishments: at times the fairy-tale effect, surviving the subtractive work, inserts itself into some grooves and makes one smile, but the various pieces of the instrumental puzzle, more often, fit alchemically, creating a disorienting effect, and marry seamlessly with the otherworldly crooning of Engel/Walker. Of the ten pieces that make up the album's tracklist, at least three or four are untouchable, others are sophisticated and impeccable at a melodic level, and the few remaining, probably less inspired, are still appreciable.

The first four compositions, in my opinion, are the pieces of an ideal medley: "The Seventh Seal", a synthetic story, in song form, of the plot of the eponymous film by Ingmar Bergman, twelve years earlier, and a sound sketch opened by Morriconian trumpets reminiscent of the contemporary Fabrizio De André (the one from "Tutti morimmo a stento", released the previous year); "On Your Own Again", where Scott paints conflicting emotions within a brief and intense minute (and forty-eight seconds); "The World’s Strongest Man", a tender love song, a great demonstration of humility of a man bending under the weight of his own feelings ("And didn’t you know that I’m not the world’s strongest man?/When it comes to you and your world, I’m lost"), concluding with the first exemplum of the scat vocal improvisations that are a hallmark of the artist; "Angels of Ashes", a true poem set to music, a concentration of suggestions that develop, verse by verse, like an aedic song, with words full of sweetness, spirituality, and subtle irony. To close the A-side of the vinyl, "Boy Child", a composition with a symphonic breath, in a Western key, merging with Eastern chimes: only in this fragment can the crooning appear cloying, not effectively combining with the moods of the orchestra.
The same discourse for the first side applies to the second. Here too, the first four "movements" tell a single little big story on a plane of conceptual panoramas: "Hero of the War", a pleasant anti-militarist divertissement (an apparent oxymoron!), supported by a guitar and percussions imitating a galloping pace; "The Old Man’s Back Again", a monumental song, presenting a bass line (provided by Herbie Flowers, the same behind those foundational in "Space Oddity" by Bowie, a great admirer of Walker, and "Walk on the Wild Side" by Reedian) among the most powerful and vibrant ever heard, a chorus akin to an embrace (thanks to Walker's vocal cords, but also to the accompanying Gregorian-choir style) and an unheard-of intensity text, subtitled "Dedicated to the Neo-Stalinist Regime", referencing the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia (verses like "And Andrei V. he cries, with eyes that ring like chimes/His anti-worlds go spinning through his head/He burns them in his dreams/For half-awake, they may as well be dead", but especially stanzas like "I see a soldier, he’s standing in the rain/For him there’s no old man to walk behind/Devoured by his pain/Bewildered by the faces who pass him by/He’d