“Scott 4” by Scott Engel - album review

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TJR says

His 5th LP “Scott 4” (Philips SBL-7913) was released in November, 1969. The quote “a man’s work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened” (credited to the French-Algerian writer Albert Camus) appears on the back of the sleeve of the album. Clearly, “a vain pursuit of meaningless smiles” was not for this former pop heart-throb. As the decade drew to a close, even his recent dalliance with Jacques Brel’s cynical brand of chanson was deemed too pop. On this LP, all of the material was penned by the moody troubadour himself, and he sealed his commercial suicide by dropping the Walker and reverting to his birth name. I have to say, respect is due to this man. The stunning opening track, “The Seventh Seal”, is based on the film of the same name by filmmaker Ingmar Bergman. What the world needs now, thought Scott, is a song about existential angst in plague-ridden 14th-century Sweden. Writing for the Guardian, Jon Dennis described the piece beautifully: “The celebrated scene in which Max von Sydow’s knight plays chess with Death is played out here as a tambourine-heavy 60s beat ballad. The male voice choir and mariachi trumpet could be lifted from a western soundtrack. But the swooping strings and Scott’s operatic baritone lift The Seventh Seal into another cinematic realm.” Perhaps unsurprisingly, the housewives weren’t listening anymore, and it's perhaps easy to hear why, it's not exactly thrill-a-minute fare. Good art, however, always seems to find a way to survive…

The Jukebox Rebel
11–Dec–2015

Tracklist
A1 [04:58] 8.6.png Scott Engel - The Seventh Seal (Noel Scott Engel) Cerebral Pop
A2 [01:48] 4.4.png Scott Engel - On Your Own Again (Noel Scott Engel) Crooner / Cabaret
A3 [02:21] 4.2.png Scott Engel - The World’s Strongest Man (Noel Scott Engel) Pop Ballad
A4 [04:22] 4.6.png Scott Engel - Angels Of Ashes (Noel Scott Engel) Crooner / Cabaret
A5 [03:38] 5.3.png Scott Engel - Boy Child (Noel Scott Engel) Songwriter
B1 [02:29] 6.3.png Scott Engel - Hero Of The War (Noel Scott Engel) Cerebral Pop
B2 [03:43] 5.8.png Scott Engel - The Old Man’s Back Again (Dedicated To The Neo-Stalinist Regime) (Noel Scott Engel) Songwriter
B3 [02:51] 6.8.png Scott Engel - Duchess (Noel Scott Engel) Pop Ballad
B4 [03:14] 4.7.png Scott Engel - Get Behind Me (Noel Scott Engel) Soft Rock / A.O.R.
B5 [03:04] 4.7.png Scott Engel - Rhymes Of Goodbye (Noel Scott Engel) Country

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