Scott Walker

The Drift

[5/5] Find yourself wondering just what’s “alternative” anymore? Try this uncompromisingly penetrating work-the latest from a 63-year-old expatriate Yank who, before leaping into the avant-garde deep end with The Drift (and, before it, 1995’s Tilt), made his name blending the stained soul of Jacques Brel into a Sinatra-smooth package of crooning vocals and lush arrangements. But “shaved down” (as Walker describes it) doesn’t begin to describe the cinematic Rorschach minimalism of The Drift, just his third release in over 30 ears. Walker’s operatic bursts of English bound by neither syntax nor semantics read like T.S. Eliot and sound like auditory hallucinations colliding, as monochromatic stabs of guitar and tubax duel in the background with struck meat and pounding stone. With The Drift, Walker has gone as far into the atmosphere as one can travel while still being earthbound.
(4AD) Erick Haight