CD Reviews

Scott Walker | Bish Bosch

4AD (2012)

By ZETH LUNDY | November 27, 2012

1.5 Stars

Scott Walker's late-period about-face is one of the strangest in the annals of pop music. Walker, however, has never not been strange, as his 1960s operatic art-pop flamboyantly attests. Now near 70, the one-time Walker Brother has disconnected the "pop" from the "art" and staged a questionable redefinition of "art." His third album in 17 years has been making buzz for merely existing, but its other buzz — namely, tuneless, abrasive discord — is poised to make the loudest racket. Mechanical percussion, insect-like orchestration, metal guitars, and pregnant silences dart in and out of focus, all of them lorded over by Walker's warbling voice and overwrought poetics. Layered-onion genius in need of peeling, or faux-artiste bullshit? Call it what you want, just be prepared to call it something other than music.

Review: Joyful Noise
There's not much joy but there's plenty of noise of the rafter-rocking gospel singing variety in Tony Graff's musical dramedy.
Alex Chilton | Free Again: The ''1970'' Sessions
Post–Box Tops and pre-Big Star, Alex Chilton was an 18-year-old Memphis boy on his way to his dual identity: former #1 pop hitmaker, perpetual underground hero.
Cardinal | Hymns
After a nearly two-decade silence, chamber-pop duo Cardinal emerge from their near-mythic hibernation with the sleepy-eyed, Beatles-underwater gem "Northern Soul," which crawls out of the speakers as if to say, "Yeah, we've been gone since 1994 — but really, don't mind us!"
Snow Patrol | Fallen Empires
Word on the street had Snow Patrol looking to change up the big anthem sound for their sixth release.
O'Brother | Garden Window
O'Brother's bio for their debut album, Garden Window, reads in part: "Native American tradition believed taking a picture of someone also took a piece of their soul. O'Brother views this album in the same vein. It captures a piece of them at a time in their lives that they will never get back."
Guided by Voices | Let's Go Eat the Factory
The GBV name on Let's Go Eat the Factory' s label indicates two things to those fans: this is the first record to feature the "classic" Bee Thousand/Alien Lanes line-up since 1996, and this is the first Pollard album to deserve the GBV moniker since the break-up.
Brite Futures | Dark Past
A few years ago, the cutesy teens in Natalie Portman's Shaved Head slid out of Seattle on the hot pink shoulders of robo-bounce kinda-hit "Me + Ur Daughter" and the cheap intrigue of a ridiculous moniker.
A Place to Bury Strangers | Onwards to the Wall
Onwards to the Wall clocks in at 16 minutes and 35 seconds, and it could shatter into smithereens at any moment.
Cloud Nothings | Attack on Memory
With Attack on Memory , the third full-length from Cleveland-based Cloud Nothings, 20-year-old frontman Dylan Baldi approaches new, drastically darker material with the same empty-bottle angst that made his previous releases so appealing.
You Me at Six | Sinners Never Sleep
Sinners Never Sleep is a transitional album, though such efforts rarely bode as well for the future as this does.
Imperial Teen | Feel the Sound
Like its title, fifth album Feel the Sound is as generic as doubters have probably always assumed — they sound both relaxed and exhausted.
Air | Le Voyage Dans La Lune
It was inevitable that Air would one day be asked to soundtrack a colorized version of an iconic 1902 silent French film about moon exploration, right? There's the French thing, the moon thing, the kitsch-cool factor.
Less

Topics: CD Reviews , Music, review, Scott Walker, More

| More

Most Popular

The Current Issue

Table of Contents

Cover Archive

Masthead | Authors | Contact us

Blogs

Where To Follow Me
Talking Politics | March 24, 2013 at 11:09 AM

Mo Takes His Turn
March 21, 2013 at 12:59 PM

[Q&A] KMFDM's Sascha Konietzko on art, Columbine and having balls
On The Download | March 18, 2013 at 3:22 PM

See this film series: The Belmont World Film Series @ Studio Cinema in Belmont
Outside The Frame | March 18, 2013 at 11:00 AM

See this film: This is Spinal Tap [with post-film talk by expert from Acoustical Society of America] @ the Coolidge
March 17, 2013 at 12:00 PM

ARTICLES BY ZETH LUNDY

BROWN BIRD | FITS OF REASON | March 18, 2013
Brown Bird, a boundary-pushing Americana duo from Rhode Island, make music that touches upon that can't-put-my-finger-on-it amalgamation of past and future sounds.

NICK CAVE & THE BAD SEEDS | PUSH THE SKY AWAY | February 20, 2013
Much like the similarly low-key The Boatman's Call , Cave's highly anticipated 15th album with the Bad Seeds manages the puzzling feat of making a great band seem inconsequential, if not entirely absent.

SCOTT WALKER | BISH BOSCH | November 27, 2012
Scott Walker's late-period about-face is one of the strangest in the annals of pop music.

BILL WITHERS | THE COMPLETE SUSSEX AND COLUMBIA ALBUMS | October 31, 2012
Bill Withers has always been the down-to-earth, odd-man-out of the '70s soul brothers: he's the one who came bearing a lunch box on the cover of his relaxed 1971 debut, Just as I Am .

R.E.M. | DOCUMENT [25TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION] | September 19, 2012
Fans of R.E.M. enjoy arguing over which album was the band's true shark-jump, but 1987's Document was inarguably the end of a groundbreaking era.