Track Listing

1. It's Raining Today - Scott Walker, Wally Stott, Orchestra
2. Copenhagen - Scott Walker, Wally Stott, Orchestra
3. Rosemary - Scott Walker, Wally Stott
4. Big Louise - Scott Walker, Wally Stott, Orchestra
5. We Came Through - Scott Walker, Wally Stott, Orchestra
6. Butterfly - Scott Walker, Wally Stott
7. Two Ragged Soldiers - Scott Walker, Wally Stott
8. 30 Century Man - Scott Walker
9. Winter Night - Scott Walker, Wally Stott
10. Two Weeks Since You've Gone - Scott Walker, Wally Stott
11. Sons Of - Scott Walker, Wally Stott
12. Funeral Tango - Scott Walker, Peter Knight
13. If You Go Away - Scott Walker, Wally Stott

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2954 in Music
• Released on: 2000-06-05
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: Original recording remastered
• Running time: 37 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
Scott Walker's third solo recording--album titles were never really his strong suit--is an uneven but engaging work, illustrative of the career quandary that Walker, still in his mid-20s, was trying to reconcile. He clearly saw himself as tortured, anguished performer-poet, an ombudsman of angst whose early glimpses of fame and fortune had alerted him to the essentially hollow nature of this existence, and so on. Meanwhile, an awful lot of excitable young girls continued to see him as that handsome blonde bloke with the big deep voice off the telly. On Scott 3, he is most guilty of trying to live up to both sets of received wisdom. For the first time, the overwhelming majority of the songs are Walker's own--all of them, in fact, other than two by his hero Jacques Brel, and the overblown take on "If You Go Away" that closes this record is not one of Walker's better Brel interpretations. He still seems to be finding his way as a writer, lurching between the unarguably perfect ("Big Louise", "It's Raining Today", "We Came Through") to the somewhat perplexing (most of the rest of it). Even at his least satisfying, however, Walker is still more intriguing than most. --Andrew Mueller

Customer Reviews

The thoughts of Chairman Scott
After two fine albums, mainly of outside material, Scott Walker puts his faith in his own songs. The first ten tracks are self-penned, while for the last three, he dips again into the Brel songbook. As ever, the orchestra-backed arrangements are superb, as is The Voice, and his lyricism is peerless (on Scott 4, his ambition would lead him over the top). 'It's Raining Today', which opens the album, is a superb, reflective ballad of dramatic pauses and hard-hitting melody. Indeed, of his own songs, only two are of a noticeably different style. 'We Came Through' is taken at a stirring tempo, while '30 Century Man' is the work of the cool troubadour in shades, the one obviously modern track. Individually, his other songs are fine efforts. The only problem is that, together, they are too alike to realise their full impact. The Brel material is a mixture. 'Sons Of' is excellent, 'Funeral Tango' is partly successful and 'If You Go Away' is the most imposing, but is a little melodramatic and overlong. Even so, like all of Walker's numbered albums, this is well worth acquiring.

Reflections in a diamond eye...
Obvious from its no-nonsense title, this was, of course, the third self-titled offering from Scott following the initial dissolution of the Walker Brothers sometime in the mid 1960's. The songs and song writing ability in general had improved since the rather angular Scott II, and could definitely be seen as something of a precursor to the near mythic status of the amazing Scott IV (with songs like Butterfly and Winter Night being taken to their logical conclusion with later tracks like The Hero of War and Duchess) -- with this record displaying a confidence and maturity that was lacking in the work that came before. Scott's songwriting is here nurtured by the production of John Franz and those gorgeous arrangements, which here draw on the sound that Scott is most synonymous with (and later acts like Morrissey, the Divine Comedy and Pulp would attempt to ape)... with celestial strings pouring melancholy, being callously undercut by the bombastic horns that underline Walker's resonating croon.

The album opens on a high, with one of Scott's all time classic ballads... It's Raining Today. The sound is typical of the chamber pop of this era, though, at the same time, sounds as otherworldly as anything you can imagine... even pre-empting Bowie's space-age crooner from records like Station to Station. It sets up a mood of nostalgia, loss, dislocation & heartache that will continue throughout the album, transporting us to a place that is shrouded in a misty sepia, (or subdued, like the Neil Jordan visualisation of Graham Greene's the End of the Affair... a film that continues such notions of loss and even alludes to Scott through the use of Michael Nyman's wilting string-based soundtrack). Next up is one of my very favourite Scott ballads, the ethereal and transporting Copenhagen, which, despite being exceedingly short has some wonderful piano work and harpsichord trail-off featured in those divine, closing moments. The lyrics are great throughout; much more confident and wordy than those few snippets of original material that turned up on previous efforts, with Walker not afraid to reference such diverse inspirations as Samuel Becket, William Blake and Wordsworth (whilst 30th Century Man even sounds like Scott's pop-contemporary, Bob Dylan).

Both Rosemary and Big Louise find Scott on top-form, both vocally and instrumentally as the singer picks away plaintively on an acoustic guitar as that orchestration builds in the background, whilst the lyrics drip poetry like melting glass ("my coat's too thin, my feet won't fly, and I watch the wind... see another dream blowing by" from Rosemary and "she's a haunted house and her windows are broken" from Big Louise are better than anything by romantics like Keats, Yates... you name 'um). Even better is We Came Through, which sounds almost like the theme tune to a Hollywood western, and certainly lays the groundwork for Scott IV's opening number the Seventh Seal... with lyrics that are possibly, better than Dylan ("we came through... like the gothic monsters perched on Notre Dame, we observe the naked souls of gutters pouring forth mankind" -- and people found Tilt shocking??). The next five tracks are impeccable, and show Scott at the height of his powers... crafting gorgeous ballads unlike anyone else, before or since. These songs lead us to those three excellent closing numbers, each of them translated covers of the songs of Jacques Brel... and each of them interpreted perfectly by Scott.

Sons Of remains one of my favourite songs of all time and demonstrates a more creative 'out-there' side of Scott, as he expertly crafts a giddy-carnival melody to complement what is essentially a gorgeous and haunting lullaby. Next is Funeral Tango, which is possibly the most bombastic thing Walker has ever done (& possibly the best... though it does have stiff competition from We Came Through, The Seventh Seal, Blanket Role Blues and Farmer in the City, etc), and certainly acts as a great diversion from all this lulled romanticism, with sniping lyrics that really suit Walker's cynical worldview. The album ends with Brel's If You Go Away, which mirrors the opening track, giving the album a definite cohesion, as well as offering us a prime example of that classic Scott Walker melancholy... which is great. Scott III remains one of my all time favourite Scott albums, alongside the later Tilt, and should be experienced by as many people as possible. Though, unlike the more popular Scott IV, it does take a few listens for the full effect of the album to sink in... though, when it does, you'll discover that there is simply nothing else like it.

Torch Songs
What must be understood about "Big Louise" from Scott 3 is that it is a song about a gay man slip-sliding into old age. There are many tragedies afoot in this world, but the spectre of a fading queen losing beauty and friends in the fickle youth-orientated world of the gay is almost palpable in this song. It has rightly taken its place as a torch song for those in the community who have averted their eyes for one moment from the mirror ball and disco beat, to search for the transcendent nature of being which Scott so artfully interprets here. Both Scott 3 and Scott 4 toy with existentialism in song, and Scott's sonorous voice-as-instrument melds in the mesh of instrumentation to give us soundscapes from where sing life's casualties from his throat. Play both these albums VERY LOUD at every available opportunity. Annoy people with the decibel level. If Scott's art cannot be seen, let it at least be heard.