Scott Walker Series, #10: Jacques Brel- Olympia 64 (1964)/ Ces Gens-Là (1966) MP3 & FLAC

"Et ils tournent et ils dansent, Comme des soleils crachés, Dans le son déchiré, D’un accordéon rance."

Still little-known to the English-speaking world, Jacques Brel's cabaret-style character portraits and his intense, emotional vocal delivery have had an incalculable influence on ground-breaking artists such as Scott Walker, David Bowie, Leonard Cohen, and Nick Cave. One of the most distinctive aspects of Brel's work is his penchant for writing songs that lovingly, bitterly, and often satirically bump shoulders with the outcasts and "losers" of this world, whom we tend to push outside our field of vision in the false belief that we are somehow different. While Brel may poke fun at his characters, singing of their impotent resentments and sodden escapades, he never looks down on them. This, coupled with his singular voice (which he is said to have worked on tirelessly), established Brel as one of the most original singer-songwriters of the post-WWII period. Scott Walker has said that it was his discovery of Brel's work that inspired his early solo career, and clearly Walker's existential tales of despair owe a huge debt of gratitude to Brel. The crowning achievement of Brel's recorded oeuvre are his two "Olympia" concerts, the second of which, Olympia 64, begins with the first and only officially released version of "Amsterdam." This is brilliant and essential stuff that is quite unlike anything else you've heard, and it has long deserved a larger English-speaking audience.

Jacques Brel- "Tango Funèbre" (1964) Live at the Huis Met De Pilaren

What's cooler than Scott Walker? Check this out. Fucking brilliant!

Scott Walker Series, #9: Scott Walker- Scott 3 (1969) MP3 & FLAC

"She fills the bags 'neath her eyes with the moonbeams and cries 'cause the world's passed her by."

Comprised entirely of original material and a few Brel covers, Scott 3 was a significant step away from the expectations of the mainstream audience Scott Walker had found through his work with The Walker Brothers, and though the album did still manage to garner him a final brush with commercial success, it clearly signaled the more mercurial creative path he would travel for the next 40 years. For many, Scott 3 stands as a flawed masterpiece due to Wally Stott's occasionally saccharin arrangements, which seem, at times, utterly at odds with the brooding existential impressionism of Walker's lyrics, and while there are moments when the arrangements do distract from Walker's performance, overall, they tend to lend the album a sense of irony that serves it well. And then, of course, there is "30th Century Man," a brief, ultra-cool acoustic guitar ditty that leaves one fantasizing about what an entire album of such material from Walker might have sounded like. We can only dream.

Scott Walker Series, #4: Scott Walker- Scott 2 (1968) MP3 & FLAC

"Cascading tears for every heartbeat, tonight we'll sleep with the girls from the streets."

With Scott 2, Scott Walker reached the peak of his (fleeting) commercial success by essentially repeating the recipe of his solo debut (a mix of originals, Brel interpretations, and cover songs), but doing so to even greater effect the second time around. Walker himself famously called Scott 2 the "work of a lazy, self-indulgent man," but self-penned songs such as "Plastic Palace People" and "The Girls from the Streets" suggest a songwriter who has learned a thing or two from Brel in the sense of crafting distinctive existential odes to the outcast and the marginalized. Walker's bewitching voice is in fine form throughout, and it's interesting to hear how his vocals turn some of the more conventional material inside-out; for example, in the hands of most singers, the album's final song, "Come Next Spring," would run no deeper than syrupy romanticism, but Walker's baritone forces the song into much darker, melancholic waters, peeling away its sentiment to reveal the ambiguity beneath. As with all the "Scott" albums, this deserves a place in any serious music collection.

Scott Walker Series, #2: Scott Walker- Scott (1967) MP3 & FLAC

"The girl across the hall makes love, her thoughts lay cold like shattered stone. Her thighs are full of tales to tell, of all the nights she's known."

I've always gotten a kick out of imagining British teenyboppers in 1967 seizing on this album as the latest fix for their Walker Brothers obsession and playing "Montague Terrace (In Blue)" for the first time (sometimes I include pink record players and slumber parties to further develop this theatrical scene of the absurd). While Images, the final Walker Brothers album of the 60s, occasionally hinted at the direction Scott Walker's solo career would take, nothing could have prepared his listeners for this unprecedented leap into Brel and existentialism backed by Wally Stott's gloomy orchestral arrangements. As such, Scott represents the juncture at which Scott Walker began his metamorphosis from teen idol to cult hero, and while often cited as the least consistent of his initial run of solo albums, this is only relative to the genius that would unfold over the next few years.