Scott Walker

Scott Walker's best outing to date, this contains three (violent, disturbing, romantic) Jacques Brel covers plus plenty of originals and a number of anti-war songs. "Rosemary" is powerful and vivid, while "It's Raining Today" is a brilliant, impressionistic memoir of the songwriter's young days wandering his native America, and the acoustic "30 Century Man" would lend itself to a fine feature documentary on Walker's elusive (though highly rewarding) career. This was Walker's final U.K. hit album; after this he became the cult artist he had always sounded like.