This essay was written for a collective album-by-album account of Scott Walker’s discography, edited by Rob Young. The first album of Scott’s “third phase,” as Rob calls it in his introduction, fell to me: Climate of Hunter. I love all of Scott Walker’s work, though I certainly listen most frequently to the wonderfully orchestrated solo albums of his “second phase,” in particular Scott 4. (Naomi and I covered one of the songs on that masterpiece for the soundtrack of a film about Scott Walker.) But the “late” work - which I would count from Scott’s contributions to the last Walker Brothers album Nite Flights, through the end of his life - are for me an endlessly intriguing, increasingly difficult, always rewarding puzzle. I took the assignment as a challenge, really, to try and understand better how these mysterious albums function, which led me to a close reading of lyrics.
Originally published in No Regrets: Writings on Scott Walker, ed. Rob Young (The Wire/Orion Books, 2012).
And n…
