Drift

it's not SW from Jackie, it's not even SW from It's Raining Today, this is what abstract painting is to music, not red and white stripes on canva, but more a Pollock, where the listening is less important than the recording. Songs about 9/11 seen through Elvis eyes and more strange associations in SW mind, his signing is sadly constant over all the "songs" (collection of sounds and noises from found objects carefully crafted together to have no understandable melody), a tired trembling shouting like as if SW will die at the end of the album. It is reminiscent of Sylvian's Manafon, the ex-Japan frontman basing all his career on SW voice. Drift is a curiosity you put on your coffee table alongside your Taschen books, it"s great to own it but it will hardly get used in your CD player. Great booklet thought.

Otto Dix, the early 20th-century German expressionist artist once said: "All art is exorcism. I paint dreams and visions too; the dreams and visions of my time. Painting is the effort to produce order; order in yourself. There is much chaos in me, much chaos in our time."Not all art may be exorcism, but Dix's statement certainly seems to apply to Scott Walker's most recent sound-with-text album, Drift. Since it is an exorcism, many pieces in the album address the issues that were troubling the artist. Some issues are more universal whereas some issues are more personal. On the whole, the Drift seems to deal with humans' cruelty and brutality against their fellow humans.Examples: "Cossacks Are" ironically expresses the culture industry's unabashed commodification and reification of an artist; "Clara" dramatically tells the story of how a street mob treated of the dead bodies of Mussolini and Claretta Pettacci -- as objects like pork or beef ("The breasts are still heavy/ The legs long and straight/ The upper lip remains short ...") as manifested in Benito Mussolini's dream (I think Claretta is compared to the loyal Swallow in Oscar Wilde's "The Happy Prince" - "Clara" does not present a simplistic world view); "Jesse" addresses the horrific event of 9/11 as a nightmare dreamt by Elvis Presley, representing American masses (I wonder if Scott Walker was inspired by Jean Baudrillard's statement: "That we have dreamed of this event, that everybody without exception has dreamt of it, because everybody must dream of the destruction of any power hegemonic to that degree, -- this is unacceptable for Western moral conscience, but it is still a fact, and one which is justly measured by the pathetic violence of all those discourses which attempt to erase it" - translated by. Rachel Bloul); "Jolson and Jones," with a beginning stanza evocative of the famous first stanza of Eliot's The Waste Land, conveys the human brutality hidden under the banality of everyday social exchange in a place permeated with death, disease and decay instead of rebirth of the springtime.I highly recommend this album to anybody who appreciates a challenging artistic experience.

moments of singular beauty with a few sections of songs i sometimes skip through..this album is full of truly unique music. also, it likes its own weirdness a little too much, to the pointwhere the tension ....disappears and borders on parody..kind of like bish bosch.that said, there really isnt too much music (if any) that feels like this and conveys this message,and for that it deserves praise. this album and tilt by walker are two of my favorite records, tilt in my opinion is more satisfying.

Scott Walker, pop's most enigmatic genius, puts out only one record every decade or so.... But each one is of the highest quality - a distinguishable vision that makes sense only to its creator. The Drift is no different. Scott takes you into the paranoid, schizoid mind of madness. A tumultuous soundtrack for tumultuous times. This isn't really music as much as it's layers of sound... Everything from the sound of a raw fist hitting a piece of meat to discordant droning violins. The Drift is truly a strange creature indeed. This is a man who vehemently rejected pop stardom and instead chose his very own weird, singular vision... The Drift is a masterful record and easily one of the best of the past ten years or so.

(see headline)

I've listened through only once and I've had the album a few years now. Nothing against it but I think I need only to listen to The Escape once in my life. A work of art best appreciated from afar. Jesse being one of my favorite pieces.

The first time I heard this, I was frankly terrified. Scott's love affair with melody and dissonance, his fragmented lyrics, his strident, passionate, yet somehow neutral, voice - all combine to create this masterpiece of dreamsongs. Now I can barely go a day without hearing it, and I often think of it longingly as I go through the day. Drift is a work worth obsessing over. 7 billion stars.

Singing about disturbing dark things is as old as singers. Its not like there is Scott Walker and everyone else is the Beach Boys! Besides the already mentioned Darkness and Horror, the more I listen the more I am struck by the Humor and Elegant Beauty of the whole thing. It is all the some color to be sure but it is exquisitely designed for the most part. Maybe a tad too long but overall a powerful vital musical statement.