The Drift
Scott Walker is the ultimate stranger in a strange land. Born Scott Engel in Hamilton, Ohio, he became a UK pop star with the Walker Brothers in the 1960s, sported a solo career where he was described as sounding like “Tony Bennett on acid,” and in the past eleven years has released just two solo albums – this one and 1995’s *Tilt*. Both are challenging works that require the listener to suspend their beliefs in what a song should do. You do not hum these tunes. You do not tap your foot to these beats. Preferably, you sit in a comfortable chair in a dark room and let the slowly unfolding drama overtake you. *The Drift* is the mesmerizing sound of the apocalypse oozing down the walls around you. Walker employs sparse orchestration and much of the album is spent in silence, awaiting Walker’s tremulous proclamations. One doesn’t walk away from *The Drift* with a favorite track, but with a memory for repeated phrases that have been painstakingly beaten into consciousness: “I’m the only one left alive,” “I’ll punch a donkey in the streets of Galway,” “World about to end.” Careful with this one.
The cult artist's first new studio record since 1995's devastating Tilt was written and produced over a seven-year period, and, like its predecessor, its stories are taken from a varied, almost overstuffed horizon of literature, news stories, Walker's half-forgotten dreams, and otherwise poetic neuroses.
First comes the voice, a sort of cadaverous croon that circles around melancholy passions. Then comes the music, which traffics in disembodied guitar, sour strings, seething electronics, and, above all, space. Then come the lyrics. Scott Walker on the hanging corpses of Benito Mussolini and his mistress: "This is not…
There were intermittent soundtrack and score contributions of varying magnitudes, as well as a couple other low-key projects, but The Drift is Scott Walker's proper follow-up to 1995's Tilt, an album that also happened to trail its predecessor by 11 years.
Never trust a blurb that instructs you on how to listen to a album. The sleevenotes on Scott Walker's latest exercise in obtuseness tells us 'we must' salute the great man's steadfast refusal to bow to compromise. It stinks of blackmail. Anyone familiar with Mr Engel's ouvre will be aware of his propensity to raise a middle finger aloft to the mores of industry convention.
The one-time teen idol has become more demanding and mysterious with age. Good thing too, declares Chris Campion
Coming 10 years after his last major work, the enigmatically headspinning Tilt, Scott Walker's new record is a triumphant return to his glorious past...