This is often regarded as difficult to listen to. Even people who are into the weirdest stuff they can find use this as a byword for DIFFICULT, despite it being more mainstream than you’d expect.

It’s just the common conception is one minute Scott’s with the Walkers singing The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Any More, then the next he’s sat howling “SPARED, I’VE BEEN SPARED!” over a repeating drum beat and a halo of locusts.

Wrong. It’s inconvenient to these people to acknowledge even at the time he was producing hits like Jackie (a cover of a Jacques Brel song no less, also the only top 5 hit I know of to revolve around the phrase “in a stupid ass way” at that time) he was also recording the likes of Plastic Palace People, weirder than anything on Tilt.

It’s not on Tilt, but I will go into it anyway for anyone unfortunate not to have heard it. It starts with some trippy string noise, then goes into a brass led part, then a huge multi tracked Scott Walker starts singing, ending in a bike bell at one point. It carries on like this, and is about an infant dying.

He started his fourth album Scott 4 with a song based on a Bergman movie with amazing drums, trumpets, a choir and some of his best vocals. I play The Seventh Seal while DJing and it goes down a storm. Try it.

Then of course Climate Of Hunter, an astonishing album that has Mark Knopfler playing on a GOOD album!

So Tilt shouldn’t be much of a surprise, not after some of what he’d done. 

It starts with Farmer In The City, which is Montague Terrace 2. It has some wonderful strings on, and the opening.

DO I HEAR
21
21
21
I’ll give YOU
21
21
21

Then the strings surge on and on, and occasionally there’s some drums or bass. At some point the song reaches the heights of emotion when Scott sings:

I used to be a citizen
I knew nothing of the pressure
(strings go up to the skies)
I knew nothing of the horses
(swoop back and closer to earth)
Nothing of the thresher
Oh Paolo
(Crash)
Take me with you

Cue me sobbing. It’s apparently about the last night of Piero Pasolini, also a favourite of Morrissey. Along with Scott Walker, I think. If not, ol’ Moz has no taste.

Track 2 The Cockfighter has a celebrated JUMP moment when there’s quiet then the drums come in and IT’S A WONDEFUL NIGHT! This song repeats this trick. It seems to be about the Holocaust, there’s actual Eichmann quotes scattered throughout the song.

Bouncer See Bouncer is the point of utter insanity and no return whatsoever. Just locust noise and pounding bass drum. Then out of nowhere, in an operatic and insanely trembly voice Scott sings “SPARED, I’VE BEEN SPARED!”.
Halfway through the song it turns into a romantic organ drone with Scott singing “I love this city and all it’s cleft/Left cross to the right cross, right cross to the left”. A despairing chord. Then the drums and locusts effortlessly come in. That’s why I love this guy for this reason.

When he follows the season nonsense with further, sorrowful nonsense like “The riff, and the swaddling hair” it’s genuinely poignant. Only Walker can do this, making gibberish into gold.

I cannot write any more on the album. All I can say is if you have any spare change buy it. Also but Small Change by Tom Waits, but that’s another story.