After the Lights Go Out: Best of

Full title – After the Lights Go Out – the Best of 1965 – 1967. Amid the pomp and foppery of Swinging London, The Walker Brothers always stood out. Lean, moody Californians with matinee jaw lines and those strange, tortured ballads about cuckolded existentialism and how the sun was never going to shine anymore, they clashed with both the grinning beat-groups on their way out, and the communal trip-out around the corner. ‘Love Her’, ‘Another Tear Falls’ and ‘Make It Easy on Yourself’ are all closed eyes and clenched fists, photogenic torment backed with the lush orchestration of it’s day. In between the hits are songs like ‘Mrs Murphy’ and ‘Archangel’, that hint that Scott Walker was not just a pretty face and a mile-wide voice, but a visionary melancholic set to dim the lights on the late 1960s with his string of incomparable solo albums. Free of the usual omissions and superfluous additions, After the Lights Go Out is the definitive Walkers compilation. Universal.