Seldom pleasure is all the more precious. Scarcity and uniqueness of experience begets demand. Scott Walkers creative flood of his sixties eponymous albums quartet has now been reduced to semi regular but infrequent offerings. The Drift and Tilt are both challenging, impermeable, lyrically dense soundscapes with quasi operatic overtones. The question of availability is an interesting one. If Scott Walker had released one album every 3 years and been a more accessible performer then would such an evening as tonight be possible. Scott himself does not perform or appear tonight but his presence and “negative space” saturate the evening. “Drifting and Tilting” combines a selection of aforementioned albums sung and performed by an assortment of guest vocalists. A sense of ridiculousness mixed with Brechtian confrontationalism is tonights modus operandi. Brecht’s use of “Verfremdung” or alienation would be an apt and understated way of describing the style used this evening.
Jarvis Cocker starts the evening with The Drifts most melodic and recognisable moment, Cossacks are. Wearing a pronounced red shirt and suit and tied he reads a newspaper throughout the song. The stage is stark and bare with a band enclosed in a bunker to the rear. The mission for all the performers tonight is to capture the essentially operatic stylings of later day Scott Walker. An intentionally static Jarvis struggles to sound Scott-like but performs an impassioned, doom laden interpretation. Next Gavin Friday offers “Jesse (September Song)”. This concerns the dialogue between Elvis and his still born twin brother Jesse. Unrelenting bleakness and isolation are rendered real but I still cannot help recall the last time I saw Gavin Friday. The previous time, also Jarvis related, he performed the Siamese Cat song in a camply overblown mewing manner. Which is not too dissimilar from this evening as a whole.
The galaxy compacting tension evident is so serious that it can become comical. This over flow of earnestness into comedy is nowhere more evident than in Clara and its use of pig carcass percussion. Who needs drums when the means to bring on a suspended pig carcass and a boxer/ drummer are available? Having already seen the meat pummelling methodology in the documentary “30th century Man” it was still a shock to see the pig played live. It is also a classic “Figure/Ground” perceptual dichotomy. Does the viewer see the seriously disturbed “figure” or does the observer perceive the comedic overdrive of the “ground.” The inherent gruesomeness of the staging complimented the contents of the song Clara. A song regarding Mussolinis dream whilst dead and strung up genuinely gets the staging it deserves. Patriot (a single) is arguably the closest echo to late sixties Scott. It is a jaded and matured second cousin of “Plastic Palace People.” The staging tonight involves a man wearing glittery stockings chasing a newspaper around the stage. This literal representation of the swirling newspaper referred to in the lyrics is obvious and welcome light relief. Dot Allison then appears on a metal plate island dwarfed by a coat hanger palm tree to perform Buzzers. There probably is no other way to represent a song regarding Bosnia. The blunting timbre and topic of the song is majestically transcended.
As someone who has never managed to listen to The Drift all the way through, it is testimony to the quality of the performance and staging that my attention was maintained throughout. “Jolson and Jolson” is one of those songs that I would normally find too dense, too inward looking and destructively infectious to persist with. The big screen visuals of feet walking down stairs and the claustrophobic compression of the “grossness of spring” are almost overwhelming. Unfortunately no donkey is brought on stage for the finale “donkey punching refrain.” The disturbing contagion is impossible to avoid. It is also impossible not to admire.
Michael Henry’s version of Cue is undoubtedly the vocal highlight of the evening. His voice matched and surpassed the musical discordance and BAM BAM. The BAM BAM is provided by stone blocks being dynamically pounded (and even smashed). The confrontational strobe lighting underscored the dystopian darkness of the aural experience. After the sonic assault of Buzzers, Jolson and Jones and Cue, Farmer in the city appears as whimsical light relief. As opposed to grating meteors of sonic discordance “Farmer in the City” has a gossamer light symphonic, string soaked quality. It is a reminder as to how much further down the road to primal self focused annihilation Scott Walker has journeyed since Tilt. The characters miming the “do I hear 21″ auction wear blocks of turf and earth for heads. Damon Albarn, dressed in farmers garb, struggles with the operatic essence of the song but gives a spirited Scott Walker approximation. Perhaps one day this may lead to a Gorillaz collaboration which ,although fanciful, would be no more fanciful and patently ridiculous than anything that was witnessed here tonight.
As the performance ends the dramatis personae take a collective bow. There is a tangible yet tacit hope that Scott will also emerge to take a bow. We wait. We clap. Just like Godot he fails to attend. It matters not, his existence and praeternatural presence were utterly inescapable.
Vision: (10/10) Brutal, dehumanising yet still somehow comically hopeful (unless you were the pig)
Abilitiy to Execute: (8/10): Undeniably excellent yet there was one key constituent missing tonight, probably lurking “out there” in the shadows…
Crowd Symbiosis (9/10): Hard to measure shock and disturbance as engagement. But as an experience it was all immersing, encompassing and brutal
Would See Again: (10/10) If and when Scott deems it timely to emerge again you will find me there
Posted by andywaterhouse 
Posted by andywaterhouse 
Posted by andywaterhouse 
