Album: The Drift
Artist: Scott Walker
Born: Hamilton, Ohio
Released: May 2006
Genre: Art Rock
Scott Walker has probably had the most interesting trajectory in pop music. After the 1969 release of Scott 3 -- an album that Walker says was "written in 3/4" and that "you couldn't dance to" -- his commercial appeal faded fast and his masterpiece, Scott 4, went largely unnoticed. Walker was still touring during the 70s, even as part of the reformed Walker Brothers from 1975 onwards, and put out three records before the band broke up for good in 1978. Their last LP, Nite Flights (1978), mixed a contemporary new wave sound with a more experimental approach, and tracks like The Electrician had elements (dark subject matter, twisted vocals) that would define Walker's later solo work. The release of Climate Of Hunter (1984) was the sum total of his recording output in the 80s, and it wasn't until 1995 that Walker re-emerged from the shadows with another solo LP, Tilt. This unleashed a period of uncharacteristically high-profile activity, including the contribution of a Dylan cover (I Threw It All Away) to Nick Cave's soundtrack for To Have & To Hold (1996), his own soundtrack for Leos Carax's Pola X (1999), two songs for Ute Lemper's album Punishing Kiss (2000), curation of the Meltdown Festival in 2000 and production work on Pulp's LP, We Love Life (2001). After being signed by 4AD, Walker began the recording sessions for The Drift in 2004 and spent 17 months in the studio. The record has the same menacing atmosphere as Tilt, with Walker's ageing baritone set against an orchestral backdrop and strange sound-effects, such as the braying donkey on Jolson and Jones. The effect is unsettling, and the music has the ability to shock with its grotesque sounds and lyrics, many of which conjure up troubling images. In this sense, The Drift is not a record that I enjoy, but its genius is to challenge listeners to rethink their approach to music.
Walker's music makes me think of another artist, painter and sculptor Alberto Giacometti, whose figurines are whittled down to such an extent that all that's left is an irreducible core. The Drift has a sound that's so spare and austere ("shaved down", as Walker puts it) that many normal musical props, like melodies and choruses, have been dispensed with altogether. There are no arrangements as such, so all that remains are "big blocks of sound". Jesse sees Walker responding to the 9/11 attacks through the warped perspective of a nightmare shared by Elvis Presley and his dead twin brother Jesse, and the music is no less strange, a distorted version of the Jailhouse Rock guitar riff in search of a drum part that never arrives. Much of the percussion on the album is radically experimental, with the sound of meat being punched the musical accompaniment on Clara. This song, like others, has a rarefied subject matter, in this case Clara Petacci's relationship with Mussolini and their shared death ("Sometimes I feel like a swallow / a swallow which by some mistake / has gotten into an attic / and knocks its head against the walls in terror"). Other surreal moments are Walker's Donald Duck impression at the end of The Escape and the comic "psst"-ing on A Lover Loves, one of the record's standout moments. Walker also experiments with repetition on Cue, a song about disease that actually made me jump about 5 minutes in during my first listen. Two things that make The Drift so remarkable are Walker's expanding musical palette, including ambient soundscapes and drone (he teamed up with drone wizards Sunn O))) to release Soused in 2014), and his songwriting. Walker has a unique ability to write from the perspective of characters caught up in historical events, rather than reporting on them himself, with Buzzers (after its radio opening reminiscent of Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here) about the Srebrenica massacre from the point of view of the torturer. Walker has become very much the musicians' musician, with his experimental attitude an inspiration to many singer-songwriters, but with a little effort and dedication his art is accessible to everyone.
Scott Walker has probably had the most interesting trajectory in pop music. After the 1969 release of Scott 3 -- an album that Walker says was "written in 3/4" and that "you couldn't dance to" -- his commercial appeal faded fast and his masterpiece, Scott 4, went largely unnoticed. Walker was still touring during the 70s, even as part of the reformed Walker Brothers from 1975 onwards, and put out three records before the band broke up for good in 1978. Their last LP, Nite Flights (1978), mixed a contemporary new wave sound with a more experimental approach, and tracks like The Electrician had elements (dark subject matter, twisted vocals) that would define Walker's later solo work. The release of Climate Of Hunter (1984) was the sum total of his recording output in the 80s, and it wasn't until 1995 that Walker re-emerged from the shadows with another solo LP, Tilt. This unleashed a period of uncharacteristically high-profile activity, including the contribution of a Dylan cover (I Threw It All Away) to Nick Cave's soundtrack for To Have & To Hold (1996), his own soundtrack for Leos Carax's Pola X (1999), two songs for Ute Lemper's album Punishing Kiss (2000), curation of the Meltdown Festival in 2000 and production work on Pulp's LP, We Love Life (2001). After being signed by 4AD, Walker began the recording sessions for The Drift in 2004 and spent 17 months in the studio. The record has the same menacing atmosphere as Tilt, with Walker's ageing baritone set against an orchestral backdrop and strange sound-effects, such as the braying donkey on Jolson and Jones. The effect is unsettling, and the music has the ability to shock with its grotesque sounds and lyrics, many of which conjure up troubling images. In this sense, The Drift is not a record that I enjoy, but its genius is to challenge listeners to rethink their approach to music.
Walker's music makes me think of another artist, painter and sculptor Alberto Giacometti, whose figurines are whittled down to such an extent that all that's left is an irreducible core. The Drift has a sound that's so spare and austere ("shaved down", as Walker puts it) that many normal musical props, like melodies and choruses, have been dispensed with altogether. There are no arrangements as such, so all that remains are "big blocks of sound". Jesse sees Walker responding to the 9/11 attacks through the warped perspective of a nightmare shared by Elvis Presley and his dead twin brother Jesse, and the music is no less strange, a distorted version of the Jailhouse Rock guitar riff in search of a drum part that never arrives. Much of the percussion on the album is radically experimental, with the sound of meat being punched the musical accompaniment on Clara. This song, like others, has a rarefied subject matter, in this case Clara Petacci's relationship with Mussolini and their shared death ("Sometimes I feel like a swallow / a swallow which by some mistake / has gotten into an attic / and knocks its head against the walls in terror"). Other surreal moments are Walker's Donald Duck impression at the end of The Escape and the comic "psst"-ing on A Lover Loves, one of the record's standout moments. Walker also experiments with repetition on Cue, a song about disease that actually made me jump about 5 minutes in during my first listen. Two things that make The Drift so remarkable are Walker's expanding musical palette, including ambient soundscapes and drone (he teamed up with drone wizards Sunn O))) to release Soused in 2014), and his songwriting. Walker has a unique ability to write from the perspective of characters caught up in historical events, rather than reporting on them himself, with Buzzers (after its radio opening reminiscent of Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here) about the Srebrenica massacre from the point of view of the torturer. Walker has become very much the musicians' musician, with his experimental attitude an inspiration to many singer-songwriters, but with a little effort and dedication his art is accessible to everyone.
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