It seems unlikely, but there may exist a fan of Scott Walker’s 1960s oeuvre, confused and upset by what he’s been up to in the last 15 years, who will nevertheless approach his 14th solo album in a spirit of optimism. Perhaps Bish Bosch’s two immediate predecessors will have sated the 69-year-old singer-songwriter’s desire to make complex, baffling, avant-garde music, and this new venture will be a return to the lush balladry of his first four solo albums: this, according to Walker, was the logic upon which the major label that put out his 1995 album Tilt operated, believing that once he’d got it out of his system, he’d come to his senses and make Scott 5. If so, that optimism is likely to evaporate very soon after pressing play: the first thing you hear is 30 seconds of drums that aren’t so much being pounded as punished, overlaid with a kind of electronic shriek. Walker has always protested that people miss the humour in his work – in fairness, that’s perhaps an inevitable consequence of writing songs about existential despair, Nicolae Ceausescu, illness, and disgust at the human body – which may be why he appears to have amped it up here. It’s hard to listen to Bish Bosch without dissolving into helpless laughter at least once, [or] maybe at the chorus of farting noises on Corps De Blah. [Source]
New Music United 