Polygram Int'l
2000
Portrait
About This Album
The Walker Brothers' second U.K. album was their most commercially successful, reaching number three, yet its quality was quite erratic. Like some other pop/rock LPs of its time, it suffered from an apparent strategy to appeal to a wider demographic than those that typically bought pop/rock records, adding a cover of Louis Armstrong's "Just for a Thrill," the moldy standard "Old Folks," and the pedestrian white-boy soul workout on Curtis Mayfield's "People Get Ready." On the other hand, this had the dramatic "In My Room," a fine antecedent of Scott Walker's moody late-'60s solo outings. The two songs Scott actually wrote or co-wrote, "Saturday's Child" (which sounds too close to "River Deep, Mountain High" for comfort) and the easygoing crooner pop of "I Can See It Now," are OK but nothing more. The LP was filled out by a decent reading of "Summertime," covers of a couple of obscure Leiber & Stoller tunes ("Take It Like a Man" is very much in the Drifters' style), and the melodramatic "No Sad Songs for Me" (the best tune that doesn't show up on the After the Lights Go Out: The Best of 1965-1967 compilation).
Track List (try tracks 1,7,13,14 and 20)

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