Press play: Scott Walker: 30 Century Man DVD (Oscilloscope Laboratories)

Welcome to another edition of Press Play in which we highlight new music that’s worth investigating even if it didn’t quite fit in this week’s issue. This week, we're showing our love for a music documentary, now available on DVD.

Rock and pop music have more than their share of enigmas—but many of the mysterious characters in music world are merely self-styled eccentrics or personalities deformed from reaching for the stars for too long. Sensitive folk there are many, but very few count as pioneers of modern art. Which ones? That’s a matter for the critics and the heads to arm-wrestle over. 30 Century Man examines one of music’s truly unusual artists with a seriousness and reverence appropriate to its subject matter—the one and only Scott Walker.

The doc (executive produced by David Bowie and directed by Stephen Kijak) traces Ohio-born Scott Engel’s career from teenage demo recordings to days as a session bass player on the rockin’ Sunset Strip then to London, where as a member of the Walker Brothers, a baroque mod trio of unrelated ex-pat American musicians, Walker tasted the giddy heights of stardom in the swinging U.K. of the ’60s. As a pop star in England, every move of the Walkers was followed in the tabloids as were each of the group’s chart-topping singles, sung mainly by Scott. Why the group isn’t so well known in the U.S. I’m still not sure. Its best tunes almost rank up with the Beach Boys and the Beatles classics.

Walker split the band for what would become his uniquely odd solo career. Singing a combination of his own classical-influenced modernist tunes, suave interpretations of Jacques Brel-penned tunes and middle-of-the-road pop, Walker’s career continued to shine—until, almost inexplicably, his records stopped charting. As 30 Century Man makes clear, Walker’s vision was much bigger than pop and a record company plan.

Even in a brief reunion of the Walkers in the ’70s, he proved influential. The band’s Nite Flites, the doc shows, could pass for contemporary—and the Walker cult considers it one of his perfect albums—vastly underrated by the philistine throng.

Diehard fans know that Walker re-emerged a few times since with new albums, most recently the forward-looking 2006 collection The Drift. But 30 Century Man fills in the gaps in Walker’s mysterious career and artistic process better than any Mojo article I’ve come across. With interviews from Brian Eno, David Bowie, Jarvis Cocker (whose Pulp Walker produced) and Neil Hannon of the Divine Comedy, a fuller picture of the Walker mystique and process emerges. Though it would have been nice to get an American perspective from someone.

Not so revelatory but thrilling nonetheless are interviews with the man himself—the extremely reclusive Walker comes through as a whole person who enjoys himself in the studio, even as he constructs songs about the killing of Italian dictators from percussion on a slab of raw meat. What has he been doing when he's not making music? Just living, he'd say. Whether Walker is more genius than eccentric, only your ears can tell, but getting the chance to consider either possibility makes 30 Century Man the year’s most enriching music documentary.

Scott Walker: 30 Century Man is available from Overstock.com and available for rental or to watch instantly via Netflix.