The Walker Brothers: Images [★★★]

In 1965, three unrelated Californians decided to move to England and become the next Righteous Brothers. Soon enough, Scott Engel, John Maus, and Gary Leeds took the stage name Walker and began to assail the British pop charts with orchestrated, Wall-of-Sound ballads from the hit songbooks of Bacharach-David and other commercial 60s titans. Never big in the States (other than with their classic midtempo downer “The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore”), they became basically a huge “boy band” in the UK, with screaming fans and pin-up magazine spreads.

Within a couple years the fandom started to wear on lead singer Engel, whose titanic voice moved easily from soft-pop croon to operatic bombast, and whose bandmates began to seem increasingly ancillary. Leeds didn’t sing, or even play (except drums, and only in concert), and Maus’ earthy tone was pleasant enough, but hardly a match for Scott’s multioctave howitzer of a voice. As early as 1966, the band seemed to be pulling in different creative directions, as they continued to record highly orchestrated, though bland ballads, while Engel’s initial efforts at songwriting increasingly began to display a dark, almost gothic style full of cryptic lyrics and eerie, bombastic arrangements (sample song title: “Archangel”). Releasing an EP prophetically titled Solo John - Solo Scott (with two solo tracks per side), the Walkers would break up in early 1967 after finishing Images, their third full-length.

Like their other two LPs, Images is wildly uneven, with schmaltzy lounge crooning ostensibly aimed at the Tom Jones/Englebert Humperdinck housewife fanbase (“Once Upon a Summertime”, “It Makes No Difference Now”) mixed in with some excellent Scott Engel originals such as the weird 6/8 “Experience” and the lush “Genevieve”. But Engel’s tracks feel like impecccably tuxedoed aristocrats stuck in a smoky airport piano bar; to hear Scott’s dramatic “Orpheus”—note how the meticulous orchestration accompanies and enriches the song, rather than drowning it in dull waves of violins—in between dry and bland takes on “Blueberry Hill” and “Stand By Me” is a frustrating lesson in how not to pace an LP. Maus’ two originals include “I Wanna Know”, the hardest track on the album, with its ’67 fuzzed out guitar, and the moody organ and vibes of “I Can’t Let It Happen To You", one of Maus’ best original compositions. But this was the end of the Walker Brothers (until the mid-70s, anyway), and they acknowledge it with closing track “Just Say Goodbye”.

MP3: "I Can’t Let It Happen To You"

The Walker Brothers: Images (Philips, March 3, 1967)

Side One

1. Everything Under the Sun (B. Crewe, G. Knight) 4:15
2. Once Upon a Summertime (M. Legrand, J. Mercer, E. Marnay) 3:49
3. Experience (S. Engel) 2:53
4. Blueberry Hill (A. Lewis, V. Rose, L. Stock) 3:25
5. Orpheus (S. Engel) 3:24
6. Stand by Me (B. E. King, J. Leiber, M. Stoller) 3:27

Side Two

7. I Wanna Know (J. Maus) 2:28
8. I Will Wait for You (Theme from Les Parapluies de Cherbourg) (M. Legrand, J. Demy, N. Gimbel) 3:38
9. It Makes No Difference Now (N. Newell, I. Pattacini) 2:37
10. I Can't Let It Happen to You (J. Maus) 3:11
11. Genevieve (S. Engel) 2:49
12. Just Say Goodbye (P. Clark, P. Delanoé, A. Hatch) 3:33

Similar Recordings

Scott Engel would go on to record a series of richly orchestrated and wildly original solo albums as Scott Walker before succumbing to bland commercial pop; all of his first five solo albums are highly recommended if you are interested in the concept of a psychedelic Frank Sinatra. Maus and Leeds would both make albums in ’67 and ’68 respectively; neither sold much, but Walkers fans will find them enjoyable. The Walker Brothers’ legacy is best approached in the wonderful catch-all 2006 box set Everything Under The Sun, which collects all of their 60s recordings as well as their three 70s reunion albums. As much of their best work appear on singles and EPs and not on their albums, this is one-stop shopping at its best.