New Scott Walker album: 'The Drift'

(I am agreeing with you hstencil, not mocking you)

Christ.

Hand Me Up also ends on him feeling like christ... the nails going into his feet and hands... so yes, mocking himself and the way he is perceived, (the tortured artist is all an audience wants) or just the way no-brow sleb-culture in the end wants only to crucify those it once celebrated, it wants them dead (see Pedro Doherty et al...)

Psoriatic refers in part to "the silver people" (the term for people who suffered with psoriasis in medieval times) which I read elsewhere as being a subject Scott has written about before (a piece for his Meltdown Festival back in 2000 was it?)- but I don't know what all the blanket stuff is about...

Cue and Jolson and Jolson evade my grasp at present, but the fat black crocodile on the sandbar is a nice image...

see, i got that in Psoriatic ("anthrax, jesus.../ pulling out won't be slow") but didnt get it in The Escape.

In comparison to "Tilt" this is way more claustrophobic, and unremittingly dark. I'll be honest and say it did frighten me listening to it the first time after I smoked up last night, and definitely is one of the most uneasy listens to a cd I've had in ages.

However, I don't mean this in a necessarily negative fashion -- "The Drift" is uncompromisingly brave, but with very few moments of relief like "Tilt" had -- Scott is always engaging through his perfofrmance on here (I think his vocal on "Clara" is one of his best in years) but he plays such a perfect straight-man to his frightening soundscapes -- the 1st listen on headphones real loud found me just as uncomfortable at times with his vocal presence than with the music itself.

While he toiled with the themes of alienation in earlier records, the deeper he goes the more interesting and beguiling it gets- To be honest some of the skewed ambience reminded me of "Silent Hill" the game at times, which did take cues soundwise from "Jacob's Ladder" -- a kind of industrial stomp that is very unsettling.

It's probably going to be my album of the year.

"Walker sings through the feelings of others as if they were inside him, exorcising all the horrors he's watched and read. He conveys the souls of the unspoken victims through his compositions ... people who are victims of poltical/state control"

OTM.

Having heard it a few times I can get a clearer handle on the contrast of textures. He is adept at mixing the acoustic qualities of naturual instruments with the processed electro-accoustic ones. Again, referencing " Clara ", he uses a medieval flute tone (A nod to Ennio Morricone's medieval library music for Pasolini's Life trilogy). The flute tones are narrow in the Pythagorean Scale in D, but Scott works against this limited scale admirably.

He repeats the tactic throughout the album. On " Buzzers" it's the Guitar, and insistent tapped glass, as well as the looped tone generator (or what sounds like one). Working against the sparest of musical materials, so that the lyric is illuminated above all other textural considerations.

No it isn't — it's actually rather typical.

To describe socio-political angst in a way which isn't balls-achingly obvious and gauche is pretty decent too, given that many many artists of late have tried and succeeded only in producing music thats embarrassing.

That's more like it.

There's an unending stream of self-possessed instrumental music... to be sure.

Bah

PaulBaran: The hissing on a lover loves is a distancing technique for definite, to prevent the song from being pleasant, to undercut the relative ease of the melody in comparison with whats gone before...

yes, your observation is spot on and wholly consistent with the procedures he uses in pyschic disruption, as well as that hissing, you can also hear the guitar veer of atonally as well on that song. Most great music, manipulates different emotions; Here Mr Engel opts to manipulate our fear, just as global governments and corporations do.

like jesse. ok, when i listen to it now i know that it's somehow about elvis' dead brother and the twin towers, and there's a guitar reference to jailhouse rock, and the pow pows are the planes hitting the towers...

but damned if i know what elvis' dead brother has to do with the twin towers, or how they fit together in the song, other than that they lyrics seem to morph back and forth between the two subjects, or what all these references actually communicate in the end

which doesn't make the song any less powerful, i'm quite happy to listen to it without figuring it out as if it were a code. but i'm also not convinced there really is anything to figure out at the end of the day.

like hand me ups. ok, its about reality tv/global celebrity culture etc. and sw's commentary on that is to bring in the old artist-as-jesus, crucified for the spectacle of the masses, allegory.

not exactly subtle, or original.

Isn't that what defines great art. A work which simultaneously allows you to stand back as a spectator and take in the whole effect of it, while it merits enough elusivness to elcit a range of critical responses, ranging from " Fuck me to the socio-political undercurrents of this are infinite X,Y,and mr Zebedee". You can enjoy it on multiple levels, no matter which way you are mentally and emotionally orientated towards it. Your response isn't less valid than mine, it's just as unique.

Boychild " Go seek the Lady" ;)

Paul.

but if someone has a good explanation of what, say, jesse is supposed to actually mean, beyond listing all the reference points, i'd like to hear it!

words

Well, to be precise, it's one of his only vocals in years!

I listened to "Tilt" recently for the first time in ages, it's an album that gets less impressive the more you listen to it. Still looking forward to the new 'un tho, of course!

Do tell — I've been listening to it the last few days myself...

Geri