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.

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