Bish Bosch

About

Scott Walker claims that <i>Bish Bosh</i> is the final installment of a trilogy that started with 1995's <i>Tilt</i> and continued with 2006's <i>The Drift</i>. The stylistic similarities are readily apparent in the extreme musical dynamics, with vocals that sound like an opera singer being strangled in the back of a theater and a sense that the world might end at any moment. This is ghost music, enlivened by thoroughly unconventional song structures and skewered arrangements that the average pop music fan might find unnerving, confusing, and (likely) hostile. But for listeners acclimated to Walker's extreme levels of tension, the music here is as refreshingly unusual as ever, with lyrics that wander all over the cultural map. Due to the sizable length of several cuts (the excellent "Corps De Blah," the mind-melting "SDSS14+13B (Zercon, a Flagpole Sitter)," "Epizootics!," and "The Day the 'Conducator' Died (An Xmas Song)," the album has the feel of being one long piece. Brief intermissions are found with the intro ("'See You Don't Bump His Head'"), "Phrasing," and the less-than-three-minutes "Pilgrim."

via Apple Music

The Clerk says

Start your shelf to read the full take →