Search - Scott Walker :: It's Raining Today: Story (1967-70)

Five stars for Scott Walker, 3 stars for this collection....

ntrop | Foster City, CA United States | 10/25/2000

(5 out of 5 stars)

"If you are unfamiliar with Scott Walker, and looking for an introduction to his art, skip this disc and go directly to "Boy Child", a much better collection made up entirely of his own excellent compositions, re-mastered in 24-bit HDCD. That said, no matter what Scott Walker CD you choose, there is little anyone can do to prepare you, but I'll try anyway.I only recently discovered Scott Walker's music and it has affected me like nothing I have heard in years, and I listen to A LOT of music. You may be tempted to automatically hit the "eject" button after the first few seconds of the very first song. Resist this impulse! This music requires you to acclimatize to it; the data streaming into your ears simply will not compute at first. You'll try to deny it, to laugh it off. You'll wonder where in the world this music came from, and ponder who the heck it was intended for (certainly not me!). You'll swear you could never possibly actually LIKE this stuff, but you'll keep coming back. Over and over. Scott Walker has you in his grip. Prepare to do internet searches on Scott Walker to learn more about the originator of this inexplicable music. Prepare to invest in his first 4 CD's (from which this collection is culled), only to realize that there are now newly re-mastered editions available with restored artwork and 24-bit sound. You'll buy those, too, and end up with 2 copies of all of his early albums. Finally, prepare to invest in his more recent works as well (skip Climate of Hunter, and do not listen to Tilt in the dark by yourself). I know all this, because this is exactly what happened to me. And I'm not even mad about it.Imagine a rock-and-roll Sartre with Sinatra's vocal chops and backing band, singing songs about man's inhumanity to man, all played entirely WITHOUT irony. I couldn't believe it either, until I finally accepted what I was hearing. Scott Walker is clearly a genius, but definitely not a happy man, and alienation is his primary theme.If this description does not deter you (and it should deter some of you), I urge you to purchase Boy Child (or this disc) and fall in love with the pure unbelievable HUMANITY of Scott Walker's art. BTW: Keep Scott Walker to yourself; your friends will never, ever understand. It's that special."

A Gateway to the Glories of The Voice.

Edward Dunn | 08/14/1999

(5 out of 5 stars)

"In the absence of the now-deleted "Boy Child"--which covers the same period--this is the place to start for a discovery of the one-and-only Scott Walker. In my early 'teens, I liked some of The Walker Brothers AM radio fare from the mid-'60s, like "The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore." But, before long, they...and beautiful lead vocalist Scott "Walker" Engel...seemed liked just another forgotten band with a few hit singles. Wrong!! About 10 years ago, thanks to the enduring British reverence for American expatriate Scott Walker, I read about and began to pick up the on the start of the slow and steady series of Scott Walker/The Walker Brothers reissues. I have about 2,500 CDs, arranged haphazardly according to what I listen to most often. My 15 Scott and his Brothers CDs are front and center--ahead of The Beatles, Suede, The Rolling Stones, Oasis, Tim Buckley, and The Divine Comedy...which is pretty good company. First, foremost and eternally...there's that stunning baritone and its heartbreaking vibrato. Is there a better voice in the history of rock? I think not. Then, there's the melancholy--"a deep shade of blue"--that infuses his originals and his covers. His observations on life, love and mortality are astute and his sensibilities are worthy of history's great Romantics. He's the eternal outsider, who sings with an insider's view of heartache. He's one of America's greatest Artists...who lives abroad and is virtually unknown in his homeland. It's our loss, but fortunately he stood in front of any number of microphones and sang--and I mean SANG. So, on that front, we can console ourselves with his recorded legacy...which is a embarassment of riches. To hear him is to love him."

The ideal introduction to one of the truly great voices

Peter Gibbins | Sheffield, UK | 01/31/2000

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I first heard these songs on crackling vinyl, on (then) long deleted albums lent to me insistently by a friend who had collected them from record fairs, car boot sales and charity shops over long years of searching. Now it's - thankfully - a little easier to get to grips with Scott Walker's work and this is the latest in a series of excellent reissues of material. The choice of tracks is a good cross section of the period. It's mostly his own material but with a representative selection of covers such as 'Joanna' and 'Through a long and sleepless night'. Myself I would have chosen different cover versions than the ones here but as an introduction to the styles he was capable of executing so well they serve their purpose.There are many shades of mood on this album but almost all share a reflective quality - the sound of a man baring some part of his soul to try and make sense of his part in a world that he finds bitter, confusing, mysterious and unreachable. Even on the lighter tracks, on other people's songs, Scott Walkers voice strikes a note that is somewhere between melancholy and a kind of world weary assessment of the human condition. 'Melancholy'can be a tiresome and affected musical atmosphere in the hands of lesser performers. But Scott delivers the real thing.Occasionally, on his own material like 'It's raining today' or 'Big Louise' it feels like a the brooding, floating orchestral shapes of Vaughan Williams meeting a balladeer of the bitter sweet of human frailty, somewhere in the small hours of a still, crisp, dark night. On the whole it's a very European melancholy - Scott has famously been described as the only American popular musician to find a spiritual home in the darker parts of the European creative mind.This album is a great starting point for those new to the artist and will probably leave you feeling you would like to explore more of his work. The CD contains a few of his greatest tracks but there are dozens of others that could well have been included. The wealth of his recorded work is out there and waiting and this collection is as good a point as any to start the journey."