Coming ten years after his last major work, the enigmatically headspinning Tilt, Scott Walker’s new record is a triumphant return to his glorious past. Phil Spector-esque pop sits alongside dark ballads, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Of course, it’s the opening that we still want to read. It’s the record that would see Scott 1-4 cash in, clean up, and be feted and celebrated. The lost boy child comes home. Except that’s not how it will be. The road Scott Walker chose to travel slowly knows no way back. It might be a road that leads to ever-increasing obscurity, cut adrift from all recognisable trends and movements. Still, it is a lonely road more vital, pulsing, and essentially modernist than the one any of Walker’s supposed contemporaries find themselves on.