Customer Reviews

It's Raining Today: Story

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If you are unfamiliar with Scott Walker, and looking for an introduction to his art, skip this disc and go directly to "Boy Child", a much better collection made up entirely of his own excellent compositions, re-mastered in 24-bit HDCD. That said, no matter what Scott Walker CD you choose, there is little anyone can do to prepare you, but I'll try anyway.

I only recently discovered Scott Walker's music and it has affected me like nothing I have heard in years, and I listen to A LOT of music.

You may be tempted to automatically hit the "eject" button after the first few seconds of the very first song. Resist this impulse! This music requires you to acclimatize to it; the data streaming into your ears simply will not compute at first. You'll try to deny it, to laugh it off. You'll wonder where in the world this music came from, and ponder who the heck it was intended for (certainly not me!). You'll swear you could never possibly actually LIKE this stuff, but you'll keep coming back. Over and over. Scott Walker has you in his grip.

Prepare to do internet searches on Scott Walker to learn more about the originator of this inexplicable music. Prepare to invest in his first 4 CD's (from which this collection is culled), only to realize that there are now newly re-mastered editions available with restored artwork and 24-bit sound. You'll buy those, too, and end up with 2 copies of all of his early albums. Finally, prepare to invest in his more recent works as well (skip Climate of Hunter, and do not listen to Tilt in the dark by yourself). I know all this, because this is exactly what happened to me. And I'm not even mad about it.

Imagine a rock-and-roll Sartre with Sinatra's vocal chops and backing band, singing songs about man's inhumanity to man, all played entirely WITHOUT irony. I couldn't believe it either, until I finally accepted what I was hearing. Scott Walker is clearly a genius, but definitely not a happy man, and alienation is his primary theme.

If this description does not deter you (and it should deter some of you), I urge you to purchase Boy Child (or this disc) and fall in love with the pure unbelievable HUMANITY of Scott Walker's art.

BTW: Keep Scott Walker to yourself; your friends will never, ever understand. It's that special.

In the absence of the now-deleted "Boy Child"--which covers the same period--this is the place to start for a discovery of the one-and-only Scott Walker. In my early 'teens, I liked some of The Walker Brothers AM radio fare from the mid-'60s, like "The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore." But, before long, they...and beautiful lead vocalist Scott "Walker" Engel...seemed liked just another forgotten band with a few hit singles. Wrong!! About 10 years ago, thanks to the enduring British reverence for American expatriate Scott Walker, I read about and began to pick up the on the start of the slow and steady series of Scott Walker/The Walker Brothers reissues. I have about 2,500 CDs, arranged haphazardly according to what I listen to most often. My 15 Scott and his Brothers CDs are front and center--ahead of The Beatles, Suede, The Rolling Stones, Oasis, Tim Buckley, and The Divine Comedy...which is pretty good company. First, foremost and eternally...there's that stunning baritone and its heartbreaking vibrato. Is there a better voice in the history of rock? I think not. Then, there's the melancholy--"a deep shade of blue"--that infuses his originals and his covers. His observations on life, love and mortality are astute and his sensibilities are worthy of history's great Romantics. He's the eternal outsider, who sings with an insider's view of heartache. He's one of America's greatest Artists...who lives abroad and is virtually unknown in his homeland. It's our loss, but fortunately he stood in front of any number of microphones and sang--and I mean SANG. So, on that front, we can console ourselves with his recorded legacy...which is a embarassment of riches. To hear him is to love him.

If you are unfamiliar with Scott Walker, and looking for an introduction to his art, skip this disc and go directly to "Boy Child", a much better collection made up entirely of his own excellent compositions, re-mastered in 24-bit HDCD. That said, no matter what Scott Walker CD you choose, there is little anyone can do to prepare you, but I'll try anyway.

I only recently discovered Scott Walker's music and it has affected me like nothing I have heard in years, and I listen to A LOT of music.

You may be tempted to automatically hit the "eject" button after the first few seconds of the very first song. Resist this impulse! This music requires you to acclimatize to it; the data streaming into your ears simply will not compute at first. You'll try to deny it, to laugh it off. You'll wonder where in the world this music came from, and ponder who the heck it was intended for (certainly not me!). You'll swear you could never possibly actually LIKE this stuff, but you'll keep coming back. Over and over. Scott Walker has you in his grip.

Prepare to do internet searches on Scott Walker to learn more about the originator of this inexplicable music. Prepare to invest in his first 4 CD's (from which this collection is culled), only to realize that there are now newly re-mastered editions available with restored artwork and 24-bit sound. You'll buy those, too, and end up with 2 copies of all of his early albums. Finally, prepare to invest in his more recent works as well (skip Climate of Hunter, and do not listen to Tilt in the dark by yourself). I know all this, because this is exactly what happened to me. And I'm not even mad about it.

Imagine a rock-and-roll Sartre with Sinatra's vocal chops and backing band, singing songs about man's inhumanity to man, all played entirely WITHOUT irony. I couldn't believe it either, until I finally accepted what I was hearing. Scott Walker is clearly a genius, but definitely not a happy man, and alienation is his primary theme.

If this description does not deter you (and it should deter some of you), I urge you to purchase Boy Child (or this disc) and fall in love with the pure unbelievable HUMANITY of Scott Walker's art.

BTW: Keep Scott Walker to yourself; your friends will never, ever understand. It's that special.

I first heard these songs on crackling vinyl, on (then) long deleted albums lent to me insistently by a friend who had collected them from record fairs, car boot sales and charity shops over long years of searching. Now it's - thankfully - a little easier to get to grips with Scott Walker's work and this is the latest in a series of excellent reissues of material.

The choice of tracks is a good cross section of the period. It's mostly his own material but with a representative selection of covers such as 'Joanna' and 'Through a long and sleepless night'. Myself I would have chosen different cover versions than the ones here but as an introduction to the styles he was capable of executing so well they serve their purpose.

There are many shades of mood on this album but almost all share a reflective quality - the sound of a man baring some part of his soul to try and make sense of his part in a world that he finds bitter, confusing, mysterious and unreachable. Even on the lighter tracks, on other people's songs, Scott Walkers voice strikes a note that is somewhere between melancholy and a kind of world weary assessment of the human condition. 'Melancholy'can be a tiresome and affected musical atmosphere in the hands of lesser performers. But Scott delivers the real thing.

Occasionally, on his own material like 'It's raining today' or 'Big Louise' it feels like a the brooding, floating orchestral shapes of Vaughan Williams meeting a balladeer of the bitter sweet of human frailty, somewhere in the small hours of a still, crisp, dark night. On the whole it's a very European melancholy - Scott has famously been described as the only American popular musician to find a spiritual home in the darker parts of the European creative mind.

This album is a great starting point for those new to the artist and will probably leave you feeling you would like to explore more of his work. The CD contains a few of his greatest tracks but there are dozens of others that could well have been included. The wealth of his recorded work is out there and waiting and this collection is as good a point as any to start the journey.

There is no easy way to classify this music. Rock, pop, even "symphonic lounge music" doesn't convey anything meaningful about Scott Walker. It is the opposite of "easy listening". In fact I would call it "hard listening", not in the sense of difficult or unpleasant, but in the sense of the intensity required to listen to it properly - like playing hard. Scott Walker is thrilling and exhilarating to listen to. He can be harsh and angry, but when he is gentle, he is as warm as the home hearth on Christmas. His voice has uncommon strength and his rich baritone blasts, shimmers, caresses, threatens and exults. While there are some aspects of the orchestral arrangements that are clearly late sixties, the music and the lyrics are so immediate that they unbind themselves from the age.

This collection is very similar to "Boy Child", which I believe is only available as an import. "Boy Child" is the superior collection, and I recommend you choose it in preference to this collection, even at a higher price. You cannot sample the tracks of "Boy Child" on Amazon, so you'll have to take my word that it is better. But if "Boy Child" is unavailable, "It's Raining Today" will do almost as well. My favorites are "The Seventh Seal" and "The Old Man's Back Again". If you think you are completely unfamiliar with Scott Walker, but were around in the mid-60s, then you may remember "The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore" and "Make it Easy on Yourself". That was Scott Walker singing with the Walker Brothers.

What an excellent introduction to Scott Walker's solo albums from the late 1960's! If you're at all a fan of Julian Cope or Neil Hannon's The Divine Comedy then you MUST OWN THIS.

Next, next!!!!!

I first heard this music in London in the late 60s when I was a Sunday newspaper journalist. At the time it seemed lush, emotional, but also full of existential angst and poetry, maybe a little pretentious (Scott 4 had quotations from Camus on the sleeve). Flash forward 30 years. Now I'm a psychotherapist in San Francisco, and haven't been back to London for 27 years. The CD just arrived from Amazon, and it's amazing. This music could have been recorded yesterday. Indeed, it's the only pop music of the 60s that I've revisited without being slightly embarrassed at the shallowness of my former tastes. Many of these songs are really beautiful on first hearing, and the rest grow on you. Scott Walker seemed to be over-reaching himself when he first recorded these songs - he was after all a pretty boy pop idol. But popular taste has finally caught up with him. No wonder so many of today's singers idolize him. I'm also interested to note that Walker has been true to his talent and beliefs, both in his later recordings and his private life. Ken Martin in San Francisco (jimmartin@ibm.net)

Ok, let me see if I have this straight: a guy from a known band, at the height of acid rock, decides to do easy listening music. But he decides to do sing about Joe Stalin, and guys losing their virture in army whorehoues. Is that right?

yes, it is, and makes this one of the most strange CDs in my collection. I read about Scott Walker before I bought this, and the concept was so bizzare, I just had to hear it.

Well, it is not one of my favorates, but it is intreguing enough that I do take it out from time to time. i like it on wierdness value alone. I remember sitting by the stereo, unable to turn this off, thnking "what the hell IS this?" "What is this guy DOING?" "Is this brilliant, a big joke, or is this guy just a complete nut job?"

Plus, I have to admit, this music really gives me the creeps, and I put a premium on that: Anything that envokes that kind of emotional response definately stays in my rotation

And yes. This guy is a VERY talented singer. Hey, if Bowie and Eno were influanced by Scott Walker, the man must have something going on.

Somebody tell me, should I buy the individual albums ?

Among the great lions of melancholy music Leonard Cohen, Nick Drake and Ian Curtis are all great. In many ways, however, Scott Walker surpasses them all. His is the great, lost voice of the century.