Scott Walker – “5 Easy Pieces” (2003)
A review of this career-spanning box set from always interesting Scott Walker, taken from the Pitchfork Media website and written by Scott Plagenhoef, Jan. 12, 2004…
Anthologizing Scott Walker’s career is a daunting task. Along with Walker, perhaps only The Beatles, Roxy Music, John Cale and David Bowie have engulfed themselves in both art and pop and created such riches in each vein. Incredibly, Walker swung much further in each direction than any of those other artists, singing standards (and other housewives’ choices) on a TV variety show, and creating famously impenetrable, esoteric work on his most recent (a loosely used term here, to be sure) solo albums. Therefore, the first challenge of any examination of his career demands rectifying the split between his more populist and cerebral impulses. Happily, the five-disc, 93-track 5 Easy Pieces rises to the challenge, capturing the on-the-surface duality between Walker’s MOR song styling and his avant-garde leanings, as well as demonstrating the common ground shared by everything he did in between.
Born Scott Engel in Ohio, Walker was one-third of The Walker Brothers, a group of ex-pats sold back to America as the crooner arm of the British Invasion, but it was in the UK that The Walker Brothers had the most success, enjoying a pair of #1 singles and rivaling The Beatles, Stones, and Read the rest of this entry »
The Beat Patrol 