Taking Scott Walker as your guiding star is not the worst option in The Rock & Roll career manual. Scott is one of the best things to have happened in the last seventy years musically. It doesn't get much better than Scott.
Choosing to place all your remaining casino chips on the Scott square is not without its dangers. Plenty have done so to a greater or lesser degree over the years. Julian Cope, Marc Almond, Nick Cave, Cathal Coughlan, Neil Hannon, Jarvis Cocker, John Grant,Stuart Staples they've all spent some time trying on Scott's cast offs and seeing how they look in shades under his spotlight. With greater or lesser degrees of success.
When it comes to discuss Le SuperHomard's latest, Once, one thing needs to be made perfectly clear at erm... once. It couldn't have existed if Scott hadn't existed. Simple as that. Every single moment of its vocal inflections and orchestral flourishes are Scott apery of the most flagrant kind.. Le SuperHomard in previous incarnations have sounded rather similar to St. Etienne and Stereolab. This time with Maxwell Farrington at the helm it's full steam ahead to Scott Central.
Not that it's a bad record. In fact it's rather a good one. Neil Hannon made some pretty decent records as Divine Comedy and he owes it all to Scott really too.
In some ways this sounds as much like a Divine Comedy album as it does a Scott one. It has the same louche tongue in cheek quality, the same sets of baroque bravura. I quite liked my hour in the company of this. But I don't really think I ever need to listen to again. Larceny. And they got away with it Scott Free. Geddit!!!
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