THE BELIEVER: You carried the music of Bish Bosch around in your head for three or four years. How do you live with this soundtrack in your day-to-day life?

SCOTT WALKER: If I’m working on something, if I’m absorbed in it, then if I’m going out to shop or whatever, it’s always in the back of my head. I can say that in the case of Tilt or The Drift, at times I was very easily drawn away. I would have rather prevaricated or not engaged with it, because I can be lazy like anyone else. It was not a twenty-four-hour preoccupation. With Bish Bosch, it was very different, because I was actually trying to deliver it a little quicker. But working the way that I do, you can’t. You have to lay in wait for it. I had to sit around and wait, but at least I did it. I didn’t run away from it. The only thing I would take issue with is that I think my albums work on a lot of different levels. They’re not all darkness and terror. This album has a lot of humor in it, too. If there’s one thing I absolutely hate, it’s these records that go one way. It’s what they call a “heavy” artist. The music will be dark, the singer will sound like he gargled with sulfuric acid. That’s not art. It’s art only when it’s being balanced by lots of layers. Sometimes you have to dig for it, but it’s there. When Kafka was reading his stories to friends, he’d become furious when they weren’t laughing. What I’m trying to say is, let the album roll over you. Don’t worry about it.

An interview with Scott Walker (from the current music issue). 

Also: ’Epizootics!’