Scott 4

Scott 4 was the first Walker album made entirely of self-penned songs. It was issued in the UK by Philips under his birth name, Scott Engel, failed to chart and was deleted soon after. It has been speculated that the name change contributed to its failure, and every later reissue has carried the name Scott Walker. The arrangements are slightly less ornate than before, with a more skeletal, folk-inspired sound and more weight on the rhythm section.

The Seventh Seal opens the album and takes its subject from Ingmar Bergman's 1957 film. The Old Man's Back Again, dedicated to the Neo-Stalinist regime, refers to the 1968 Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia. A passage by Albert Camus is printed on the back of the sleeve, and Engel said he wanted to link lyrics by Sartre, Camus and Yevtushenko to Bartok modal lines.

In the NME of 29 November 1969, Graham Coxhill wrote that he had not met a better album by a male singer. Select gave the 1992 CD reissue five stars. The album is listed in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die and ranked number 760 in Colin Larkin's All Time Top 1000 Albums in 2000. Members of Radiohead have praised it. The accompaniment was directed by Peter Knight, Wally Stott and Keith Roberts, with Keith Grant and Adrian Kerridge as engineers.