Review Summary: "Today is just another day. Tomorrow is a guess, but yesterday… Oh, what I'd give for yesterday."
Elegance, sheer elegance.
Scott is a symphony of absolute perfection that can flourish jubilantly like flowers in the spring, or wallow delicately in sorrow, adjusting itself to induce the right atmosphere for whatever topic is being expressed by the baritone voice of Scott Walker.
"Mathilde" serves as a truly powerful overture for the album, immediately displaying the eminent Baroque influences of the album. The music of
"Mathilde" bursts with a potent wind section that erupts behind Scott Walker's narrative of a distraught lover who cannot bring to rid himself of a romance that he knows will surely end in heartbreak. Like,
"Mathilde", a lot of the album's content consists of cover songs, particularly that of the great Jacques Brel. But all of them completely reinvented to fit Scott Walker's gloomy Baroque pop sound.
"Montague Terrace (In Blue)" is one of the few songs that is solely written by Scott Walker himself. It's a dreary piece that guises itself with a lugubrious arrangement of violin and chimes that serve as the primary harmonic framework, creating a tenebrous environment to reflect Scott Walker's melancholic imagery.
"Montague Terrace (In Blue)" is certainly one of the finest songs in the album, it is very hypnotic in all of it's mournful tone. The lyrics are certainly the most compelling aspect of the piece, his soothing baritone voice serves as this seductive allure that leaves us hanging on to his every word.
"When Joanna Loved Me" and
"Through a Long and Sleepless Night" are among other highlights of the album, and this time the instrumental sections truly shines as they exude such a marvelous romantic atmosphere. Both songs serve as odes to a past love that would be best kept forgotten, yet the memory still manages to surface every now and then, like a wound that has long been healed but is still capable of causing an ache if provoked.
The cover of Jacques Brel's
"My Death" introduces a more rock influenced sound, and within its somber melody, even manages to reflect a slight sense of psychedelia that is very reminiscent of The Doors, whose eponymous debut was released earlier that year.
"The Lady Came from Baltimore" is another piece that manages to deviate from the prominent Baroque style of the album, instead favoring a more gentle Country aesthetic. But the album shines its brightest when it indulges into grandiose Classical orchestrations, like the exquisite string and wind arrangements that work together thematically in
"The Big Hurt". In the end,
Scott proves to be a very impressive debut, and one that truly stands out from his work with The Walker Brothers. But this is merely the beginning of an artist realizing his potential, as Scott Walker would soon go no to explore a vast variety of musical genres and expanding his sound into new dimension.
Scott is a timeless collection of Baroque pieces that only prove to augment their affiliated genre, and perserve the spirit of the 1960's.
