© The Irish Times - March 4, 1994
Fontana, 518094. Import. (71 mins)
I guess I better come clean on this. I love Scott Walker's music. He is, to me, what Bob Dylan was to people who are products of a previous generation. As such, it recently angered me deeply to be told that there are still poets out there such as Seamus Heaney who refuse to acknowledge that songwriters such as Walker and Dylan are as much the natural successors of Byron and Yeats as they themselves are. Some would even argue that such song poets serve a more useful social function in that they put a tongue to the silence of millions (to paraphrase Heaney himself) rather than just articulate the longings of those who are privileged enough to read books, or to attend universities.
Indeed, having recently heard someone read to me Yeats's Her Beauty followed by these lines from Walker's Johanna: "Johanna, you make the man a child again, so sweetly/He breathed your smile/Lived in your eyes, completely/"' I perceived no substantive difference between the quality of expression, or poetry, in either. And Walker didn't even write that lyric he simply touched it and turned it into poetry. Likewise his cover version of Tim Jarvis's hymn to the act of sexual union, Inside Of You, which is sadly missing from this collection.
However, when Walker pens the songs such as his anthem for orphans, Boychild only cultural chauvinists, or snobs, would deny that this is poetry of the highest order.
Apart from the somewhat cumbersome Jacques Brel pastiche, The Girls From The Streets, all tracks on this album stem from the same sublime musical landscape including, his covers of Brel's Jackie and Matilde. Distinguishing this from all preceding collections of Walker recordings is the inclusion of two characteristically idiosyncratic songs, recorded in 1993, which were previously available only in France: Man From Reno and Indecent Service, both from Philomene Esposito's evocatively titled movie Toxic Affair. If you've ever had a relationship that can be described in those terms, you'll know what the man is singing about as with his quarter century old reference to the redemptive power of being allowed to breathe through a lover's smile.
Clearly, apart from his talents as a, songwriter, Scott Walker is still one of the most potent singers in pop music. I definitely intend to throw a party later this year when he releases his first solo, album in a decade. I may even invite Seamus Heaney.