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65 of 71 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
THE SUN AIN'T GONNA SHINE ANYMORE, June 12, 2006
"The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore"---indeed! And you thought Tilt was dark.The beating of raw meat as percussion, the distant sound of screaming children, the sinister flicker of a film projector...The only viable comparison would be demented Harry Partch cut with a lethal dose of Samuel Beckett.
Picking up where Tilt left off, Walker once again touches on such toe-tapping themes as torture, fascism & genocide. That's not to imply that The Drift lacks beauty or even humor. How else are you going ot take a line like "I'll punch a donkey in Galway"? Yet throughout this Atrocity Exhibition, Walker still has the vocal magic even at the ripe age of 63.
True, Walker's fractured lyrics tend to verge on the arcane. But do a Google search on the quotes he uses in "Cossacks Are" & the opener will seem less baffling. After repeated listens, narratives of a sort can be divined. "Clara" deals with the bloody fate of Mussolini & his mistress, going to show all's never fair in love or war. "Jesse" finds none other than Elvis Aaron Presley in a doped up stupor, muttering to stillborn twin brother,Jesse.
Musically, this album certainly has a plethora of hair-raising moments, but perhaps the most chilling is at the end of "The Escape" where Walker suddenly bursts into what can only be described as a demonically rabid Donald Duck impersonation. You don't know whether to laugh or jump out of your chair.
Where "Cassacks" charge in at the inception, things finish with Walker crooning about the likes of Bambi & Tintin (between some rather ominious Psst Psst's's). His only accompaniment---a lone, spare acoustic guitar. Though not quite a return to the maudlin ballads of his youth, still it's a dramatic exit after all the madness he releases on this thing.
Obviously, this is far from easy listening & one could argue the point of subjecting oneself to such a bleak, unremitting record. It's certainly not something you're going throw on everyday. I mean, who really wants to listen to the sonic equivalent of a Francis Bacon painting? So why take the trouble to make such a record? As far as Walker is concerned, I suppose the answer lies in inner necessity. But if cynicism is underestimating one's audience, Walker is doing anything but. No one can deny these are pretty tumultous times: Sept 11, terrorism, Iraq, Darfur, global warming...Perhaps the "drift" we're supposed to catch could be as simple as---step up & face the music.
Call it pretentious, self-indulgent, mind boggling or "Guernica---The Musical". Whatever you may think, The Drift is certainly a one of a kind experience, a powerful one. Guaranteed to raise the hairs on your neck.
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28 of 32 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Welcome Back, June 6, 2006
I fell in love with Scott Walker's voice the first time I ever heard it. I have followed him religiously wherever he wants to travel. Life is all about changes and though I relish the first four solo albums, the Brel period, and Scott's fabulous songwriting, I have accepted that he's pushing the limits on language, personae, and music concrete. I never ever expected a song from Elvis Presley's point of view about his dead twin brother, I never expected a song about Benito Mussolini's gory end. (My next door neighbor when I was growing up was actually there when the bodies were strung upside down.) Braying donkeys. Meat punching as percussion. And still THAT VOICE. Scott strings words like beads between the abrasive sound effects, between the heavenly strings. Slam poets aspire to this sort of integration of music, language, and vision. Scott may be on an island all his own but I remain astonished that he can leave his hermitage every decade and gather the images and sounds that so encapsulate the times. Sure, wouldn't it be great to look back on those 60's songs and bask in the warm trough of nostalgia. But look outside your window--could that be the four horseman of the apocalypse? Why sing covers or croon love songs when the world is burning? I'm grateful to be alive at the same time as an artist of Scott Walker's caliber. His is not an easy listening vision. He makes you work for every subtle moment of beauty. He makes demands. If you want passive entertainment please embrace the new cookie cutter babes of today's corporate sound. If you want to catch the latest addition to a mature artist's ouevre, check out "the Drift." Thank God for 4AD.
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14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Why yes, I ~Love~ terrible things!, June 16, 2006
If anyone calls this terrible as an insult, then it is a poorly placed one, because that's the whole point.
Noel Scott Engel is a man unashamed of his nightmares, focusing on the points that make the horrific visions of this day and age so nauseating, troubling, and, if you can adapt well to reality, absurdly humorous.
The arrangements exemplify the formidible beauty of spareness, or "minimalism" as some may like to refer to the instrumental backing. All that is left are the subtle and not so subtle "blocks of sound" (as Scott himself says) which augment the torrent of consistently precarious, sentient lyrics without overwhelming the essesntial beauty of the stark melodic structures.
His sonorous voice carries the quivers, resolve and aching along the path of songs like a feather experiencing every kind of weather condition before "drifting" into a patch of sheltered solitude.
If you like to be uncomfortable, or if you really can't take being uncomfortable, you really must listen to this. Scott Walker's music can provoke empathy like nothing else, for you are all at once immersed in the centre of calamity, even without realizing it. Catharsis sculpts the soul, and such are the aspirations of the creative human mind.
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