Drifting and Tilting, The Songs of Scott Walker
Booked months ago, highly anticipated. Drifting and Tilting happened, Dan and I sat in our seats, experienced it, then we left (after having the great pleasure of meeting Mapsadaisical and his partner for the first time that is). It’s behind us now. That’s the way it goes, unavoidably indeed. Here’s a song by song breakdown, for posterity’s sake and for you dear reader.
The programme already warned us that the evening would be a short one, but in its intensity it was enough for me. Eight songs, six from The Drift, two from Tilt. As I walked from work to the Barbican in the autumn darkness I’d listened to Tilt and yet again marvelled at it. Would this evening dilute its impact, lead me astray from its awe or add something more?
Cossacks Are
The evening’s entertainment (I write that advisedly) didn’t begin promisingly. Cossacks Are thunders down upon the listener at the start of The Drift, but Jarvis Cocker’s voice just wasn’t up to it and sounded much too weak compared to Scott’s voice. The band, though, played taut and merciless. It could have been louder. I’m spoilt by my expensive headphones and the volume I generally listen to Scott at. The staging was stark, underplayed, the band played behind a gauze screen at the back of the stage, in shadows.
Jesse (September Song)
Again, not good. This time the performer was Gavin Friday, a familiar name, but I’m unacquainted with his music. His performance was much too mannered, wringing of hands, etc. I didn’t like the staging either. We all know one of the primary images is Elvis and the destruction of the Twin Towers. Their shadows looming over Friday was, for me, overly literal.
Clara (Benito’s Dream)
Brilliantly performed by Owen Gilhooly, Nigel Richards and Dot Allison. Gilhooly and Richards are opera singers. They had the chops and the appropriate discipline to do justice to extended horror of Clara. The staging was brilliant too. Richards lay on the stage, his feet tied ready to be strung up while he was filmed and projected onto a large screen. Clara twisted and contorted while a boxer punched the pig’s carcass.This was the most impressive of the performances. It managed to build upon the already considerable horror of the original.
Patriot (A Single)
Michael Henry performed this unseen while Owen Gilhooly staggered and chased the Luzerner Zeitung that is a central motif of Patriot. Gilhooly was dressed in stockings adorned with butterflies, pink girly heels, belly tucked into silk knickers. He was a pitiable fool, but what was the Luzerner Zeitung? And why did it never sell out?
Buzzers (Faces of the Grass)
Powerful staging, a decent performance from Dot Allison. The horror of long-held, generations-old enmity located here in the Balkan conflict that catalysed genocide and destroyed Yugoslavia. Ghandi my brief friend, did you live to see peace? Ahmed, whose name I have forgotten, did you survive Iran?
Jolson and Jones
Nigel Richards is a survivor of war, poverty, the streets of Galway? It’s dread-full. Those reluctant footsteps, neither departing, nor ever drawing near.
Cue (Flugelman)
The staging was minimal, but impressive: a screen upon which fireflies danced. Michael Henry centre-stage, the audience intermittently blinded by arc-lights, two men smashing breeze blocks until one of them shattered, dust rising from the large box that acted as sounding bell. The song lacked the definition of the recorded version. Henry’s voice was a little weak this time.
Farmer in the City (Remembering Pasolini)
Damon Albarn singing this? Horrific prospect for a song which I think is Scott’s most beautiful, both in performance and composition. It’s brought tears to my eyes on more than one occasion. Damon didn’t do as bad a job as I feared, but couldn’t hope to emulate the original. Thankfully his assumed estuary snarl was nowhere evident, but ultimate sincerity isn’t his forte, something essential in executing Scott Walker.
Conclusion? I understand the decision to use popular performers – had they all been opera singers, Scott would have severed an important connection, at least on an intuitive/cultural level. The lineage of Brel and Weill et al is important. That said, Nigel Richards was by far the most impressive performer of the night. Drifting and Tilting, though a mixed experience was an impressive one nonetheless. Scott’s absence was at the centre of the evening. Intentional or otherwise, it was a presentiment of his own departure, that which The Drift is a movement towards. Shadow of death that haunted every one of these eight songs.
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You’re currently reading “Drifting and Tilting, The Songs of Scott Walker,” an entry on A Personal Miscellany
- Published:
- 15.11.08 / 1pm
- Category:
- music
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