Scott 3 [Import, Original recording remastered]

Scott Walker | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (January 2, 1992)
• Original Release Date: 1969
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Import, Original recording remastered
• Label: Mercury Records
• ASIN: B000025M5J
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Vinyl  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #35,580 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

24 bit digitally remastered edition with restored original sleeve. 2000. Fontana. Standard jewelcase.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Love It Or Loathe It, A Sound Like No Other, September 4, 2002

By 

Thomas Horan (Chapel Hill, NC) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Scott 3 (Audio CD)

Scott Walker has one of the most compelling, unforgettable baritone voices in popular music. Marc Almond put it best when he said that Scott could sing three blind mice and make it seem like the only song in the world and, as David J added, it would also seem like the saddest song in the world. Though it's one of my personal favorites, the lush orchestral music on this album will not appeal to everyone. It's a style largely derived from cabaret performers like Tom Jones and Engelbert Humperdinck and the production mimics Phil Spector's classic "wall of sound" minus the horns and background singers. That said, the lyrics tell the strangely fascinating stories of vagrants, transsexuals, mercenaries and other marginalized figures. In recent years, Scott's words and music have become far more abstract. But here his narratives, with a few exceptions, make the Velvet Underground seem tame.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The "bottomless baritone", April 30, 2005

By 

J. N. Marks (Near. . . Manicougan) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Scott 3 (Audio CD)

I don't think mainstream post-1950's pop music has found a better crooner than Scott Walker. His voice seems to be capable of moving high and hanging low and losing neither its resonance nor its pathos. This is in evidence on this album in particular. I am not sure this material could have been covered effectively by anyone other than this oddly melodramatic voice that takes itself so seriously yet comes across with few (if any) pretensions. Is that even possible, really? The large orchestral arrangements coupled with the social commentaries seem perfectly executed and never drip with the irrelevance so much mainstream over-the-top pop seems afflicted with lately. This album is a highly serious affair and what is so wonderful is there is nothing tongue-in-cheek about it. Walker appears to care deeply about what he is saying and you feel as you listen (I did at least) that this music matters. Can't music be important and not simply because it is entertaining?

If you enjoy Tony Bennett and Frank Sinatra and Leonard Cohen and Judy Collins, this may just be the perfect synthesis for you. Walker's voice can run the gamut from rock to pop to folk to easy listening but he's never trapped in any one genre and neither, for that matter, are his songs.

Five stars. Pop music does not get any better than this.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Scott's most consistent 1960s album, March 25, 2007

By 

TUCO H. "H. TUCO" (Los Angeles, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Scott 3 (Audio CD)

You want to know if you'll like Scott Walker? First of all, you have to like and appreciate what's called an 'over-the-top' performance style that's sometimes very sincere and earnest to the point of being laughably pretentious and sometimes done with tongue-in-cheek for effect. Either way, serious or not, when the song works, the over-the-top style doesn't just deliver the goods, it literally hits it out of the park. You have to appreciate very weird sensibilities that might seem somewhat square or unhip at first. Know for instance that Scott is the only artist I know of who had a number top 20 hit in the UK with a song whose chorus included the word "stupidass" ("Jackie" on Scott 2). Next, click on the very first track sample on amazon on Scott 3 "It's Raining Today" (a Scott Original) and the very last track "If You Go Away" (a Jacques Brel song adapted from the French into English that outdoes the original). Now, as you listen to Scott's super-smooth baritone croon, imagine someone with the vocal abilities of Tom Jones but much mellower and not some kind of macho poseur but more of an oversensitive, intellectual manic depressive who writes and covers songs with very weird lyrics. There, you're almost there! Like Charles Aznavour and Jacques Brel, his French counterparts, he's a crooner who takes a lot of chances and does not succeed with every song, but when he does, watch out! Despite the crooning, Scott is also more of a hipster or rocker in spirit than Tom Jones ever was. His covers of Tim Hardin's songs are the best demonstration of that. "If You Go Away" & "It's Raining Today" are Scott's two best performances of ballads after the incredible "Angels of Ashes" on Scott 4 which is one of the greatest songs of the 60s, period. If you want the highest-class, smoothest back-to-back taste of the lushly romantic side of the groovy 60s, do this, record "Angels of Ashes" back-to-back with "Hood Explores the Triton" by David Whitaker (track 13 off the album the David Whitaker Songbook, originally off the Hammerhead soundtrack), then press play, it's like being instantly transported in a time-warp to an incredibly bizarre and beautiful place with a mood and vibe that's hard to imagine ever existed. Don't do this too often or you'll get addicted and never want to experience the lame, artless and clueless, backwards 21st century reality of retardation in the arts and everything else existing outside your door ever again. What the hell happened? When did real artists disappear from the face of the earth and why did they impart their secrets only to Radiohead, Swans, Beck and Norah Jones?