(Jawbone Press)

www.jawbonepress.com

BY A.D. AMOROSI

This book represents a microcosm of a microcosm - pop music's most reclusive avant-mensch Scott Walker as viewed through the lens of his initial volley of stardom, the Walker Brothers. That hasn't happened since their revival in the latter-70s. That it does so exhaustively is both thrilling and a bit numbing - like what focusing on Al Jardine as much as the other Beach Boys might read like.

That said, nobody's done this - find the key to what made un-brothers, John (Maus), Gary (Leeds) and Scott (Engel) tick ever-so-reluctantly. Making a strange and ardent brand of dramatic pop - Legrand/Brel meets Bacharach/David at the vortex of the Mop Top Revolution - was weird enough to begin with. Who would bother to compete on the charts and come up with the epic likes of "Make It Easy on Yourself" and "The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore?" And who would reveal the private lives of three not-so-ugly Americans who'd eschew their own sandy shores and beachy peachy AM radio disposition to head exclusively for UK fame-dom. Musician/Jeff Buckley biographer Anthony Reynolds and the obsessive publishers at Jawbone obviously. They dig deep into harmony vocalist John's quiet pragmatism (when Reynolds mentions Maus' sense of quietude being more so than Engel's you fear for the former's actual existence), the rueful melancholy that drove their lead vocalist (even when he denied wanting to be a "modern day Quixote" in his words) and the frustration of management, business associates and friends who watched the Bros drift toward obscurity, into a weird-anew (1976's "No Regrets," 78s wildly Op-pop inspirational Nite Flights) then again over-and-out for good with but a few Scott Walker albums in-between.

Reynolds genuinely does his best to be magnanimously democratic to all parties through this thick (352 pp) volume. It might come across a bit impossible and lulling at times, but it's a dream read none-the-less. Good show.