Léo Ferré - Il n'y a plus rien (1973)

In contrast with another giant of the world of chanson, Jacques Brel, who navigated the gamut of human emotions and experiences, balancing humor, chagrin and joie de vivre, Léo Ferré tended to be tremendously serious, as only those believing themselves to be avatars of a higher form of art can be, which could be both his strong and weak suit. Even here, in one of his strongest outings, it is clear there is a somewhat stereotypical chanson à texte template framing the whole effort, where the texts, the orchestral backing, and the vocal declamations, are all placed at the service of grand and somewhat facile pronouncements about ART!, LIFE!, DEATH!, SEX!, POLITICS! ET CETERA!, working to upkeep an artiste maudit persona (that yet was somehow capable of enrolling orchestral forces for his numerous records...). However, there is also a well-aged savoir-faire and bravado in handling and combining those elements into an aesthetic whole, that forces all of those attention-seeking things to work in consonance; as well as an unflinching conviction about them that is able to push the whole thing into excess and thrive there - and that's what makes this one of those defining records in a genre that more than being listened to or enjoyed, are to be experienced. 

It's interesting then to find that, despite Scott Walker's explicit penchant in his beginnings for Brel as a songwriter (with which I generally concur; especially when it comes to the liveliness and acumen of his everyday poetic narratives, and the nimbleness of his melodic prosody), the more oppressive symphonic arrangements occasionally found in Ferré's work can seem to foreshadow Walker's later period. What's even more interesting, is whether that might causally reflect more the influence of Ferré's work on a broader musical tradition that Walker obviously drank from, or instead, like Jorge Luis Borges discussed about Kafka's 'precursors', the way Walker's towering oeuvre can reshape our perspective of artists that preceded him (even if on a very limited time scale here), whose work, beyond being its own thing, can get a new outlook by way of its retrospective link to future musical history, produced in reverse time - in this case, by sounding partly Walkeresque 'before' Walker, but only being perceivable as such, or having the musical perception of those traits differently highlighted, 'after' him. 

As these are so often matters where causal assumptions are empirically-challenged for lack of direct evidence, your choice of explanation in each case will probably reflect your preference for some artists over others more than any form of objective judgement; but either way, it's a line of reasoning that can make us question the general notion that the greatness of artists can or should be measured by their straightforward influence on future artistic production (which so often merely entails inspiring a parade of lackluster copycats), and give weight instead to the alternate conception that perhaps the best hallmark of the true greats is their radiating, physics-defying, potency of retroactively making the very past that brought them forth a more interesting place to revisit (with no risk of ever stepping on the wrong butterfly). 

Scott Walker - Scott Walker Sings Jacques Brel (1981, comp.)

Other than the possibility for English speakers who don’t understand French (snob alert) to come close to enjoying Brel’s lyrics - their sort of simultaneously picaresque and world-weary existencialism - if you dig Brel himself, I could never truly fathom what real use you might have for Walker’s renditions of his songs, committed (and rather faithful) as they may be. Not to say that Sons Of, If You Go Away, and Next, are not dramatically effective; My Death actually beats the original arrangement; but then things like Jackie and The Girls and the Dogs turn the whole proceedings into a camp-fest (or reveal the underlying campiness of it all), which could have informed quite a few more notes on the subject from Susan Sontag. 

For one thing, Scott never really reached that perfect balance between melody and verbal rampage that Brel mastered so well; you find him jumping conspicuously from one register to the other. If nothing else, Walker’s gorgeous operatic register came at a price, and just wasn’t nimble enough to do it seamlessly, making everything too emphatic and choppy, while Brel integrated it into a single uninterrupted flow. Walker's enunciation single-handedly and automatically highlighted and made symbols out of almost every other word. In Brel, words were primarily narrative tools, which drew their power from the sequence they were placed in, not from being vocally singled out all the time; his occasional morceaux de bravure only existing and making full sense in a diegetic context.

Also, Brel made you feel like he was coming from a place of experience, and pulled you in to briefly share in snippets of life; Walker sounded like he was telling someone else’s stories, pointing to their experiences, fascinated by them, as obsessively as only someone who is looking outside in might - kind of like pervs getting their kicks online (so I'm told). 

Finally, orchestrally, this sort of stages an incongruous clash of traditions as, while Walker’s more than worthy arrangers back in the day (specifically, Peter Knight and Wally Stott) did rather interesting things with his own material, in these songs the added symphonic bombast does not really befit the subtleties of the storytelling, which in Brel was closely shadowed by a more attentive, precise, and subdued orchestral backdrop.

Still, it clearly was a step Scott needed to take in order to reach a steady place of his own, with Brel serving as a sort of surrogate for Walker to start testing the water regarding the exposure of his own troubled worldviews and troubling obsessions to his then wide-eyed teen public - whose tolerance to his extremely carnal, near grotesque, enunciation of "ass", "piss", “thighs”, “fat”, and other body parts, traits, and secretions, quickly faltered (the sort of thing that was also less noticeable in Brel perhaps in part because, and to quote the only thing remotely quotable from the Matrix movies, cursing in French is like "wiping your ass with silk") and, in retrospect, understandably so, as it announced the scatological doom he would sonically befall upon us all, which was hardly gonna tickle everyone’s fancy. As such, while this is a bridge I quickly burned from my listening habits, considering all that came from it, it just might qualify as one of the most productive failures in music history.