Climate Of Hunter

The Walker Brothers’ 1978 album *Nite Flights* featured four tracks from Scott Walker that were in a completely different musical sphere from the rest of the group and most of popular music, for that matter. With touches of Brian Eno, David Bowie and Iggy Pop, Walker found his way to the future. *Climate of Hunter*, his only album of the ‘80s, is another piece of great idiosyncrasy. The lyrics exist as puzzles that are further enhanced by the generic titles (“Track Three,” “Track Five”…). The music flips out all over the place. “Track Six” is the sound of a horror movie being abducted by an alien synth and saxophone. “Rawhide” is anything but the traditional western theme. Walker is in fine voice and he even swerves towards accessibility with the standard rock drive of “Track Seven” and the back porch lullaby, “Blanket Roll Blues,” with words by Tennessee Williams and music by Kenyon Hopkins. Still, it prepares no one for *Tilt* and *The Drift*, two albums firmly entrenched in avant-garde movements of sound and texture that would follow in the decades ahead.