New Scott Walker album: 'The Drift'

i like a good transatlantic mudfest, myself

on the flip side, these stereotypes are getting at something real, however clumsily

anyway

Not so, you stetson-wearing, loud-mouthed moron.

It just seems odd that Jess should pick on the records "pretensions" as being "European" - as if there aren't loads of avant-noise US composers.

But let's let it go :)

I have no idea he said, or what you're talking about. And immediately switching the debate over to personal gripes is dirty fighting.

Come on, you're just a couple of posts away from putting your first through the screen, aren't you?

Jerry, it probably relates to the fact that Scott Walker is an American who has lived in Europes for decades and been explicity influenced by Europe's high modernist art.

xpost yes

Most sad songs are sad over things that can be cured with a hug, a few kind words, or some chocolate.

Words fail!

(The review, meanwhile, strikes me as a perfectly sound way, both humorous and serious, to talk about The Drift for an audience that is interested in music but probably almost totally unfamiliar with his work -- in otherwards, exactly the expected audience of the City Paper readership.)

People need to chill the fuck out. Jess's review was rock solid.

this is a comeback? or a non sequitir?

http://www.stylusmagazine.com/reviews/scott-walker/the-drift.htm

http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/record-reviews/w/walker_scott/drift.shtml

i dunno, i think the underlying assumption is that a majority of the regular readers of both the citypaper and pitchfork will not be overly-familiar with music that sounds like Scott's. which i think is a very safe starting point.

He didn't say that at all -- what he DID say was that if you had an online-only P&J comment, you wouldn't get paid for it, and if that was an issue, you should let him know ASAP so he could remove your comment from the webpages about to go live.

Somehow, the most incisive writing about this album is the fifth post on this thread.

I really dislike the packaging for this record. So boring and rote compared to the thing itself.

I'm a bit taken aback by how aggressive and just appalled this record seems to be. The disgust that finally seems to spill over in "What's up, Doc?" which is absolutely retched out. Flippin' heck.

I know that SW has said somewhere that he was very conscious of not just "baritoning through it" or something, presumably because that's a bit easy and would set off all the 'wrong' connections in listeners' heads ("ooh, that's a bit like Duchess"), but I'm not sure I even like Scott in this register. I know he's been up there for a while (Dealer onwards?), but can he get down any more?

Other things that spring to mind: is playing Clara this loud going to get me an ASBO? Scott's spoken word stuff reminds me of Harold Budd's poetry. Tilt is now a KC and the Sunshine Band record. Well, same tube compressors on the drums.

but it in no way, shape or form sounds remotely funny. i do not come anywhere close to laughing when listening to it.

which is totally fine.

hey, go ahead and chuckle!

i guess i just feel like there's a little bit of a desire to say it's funny in order to counteract the horrorshow/bleak/gloom consensus, because everyone naturally wants to have their own take

not that i'm doubting the authenticity of your laffs

The album reminds me a bit of how I felt the first time I saw "Full Metal Jacket," when I laughed all the way through the Paris Island scenes only to be rendered totally speechless and horrified when Gomer goes nuts and kills Lee Earmey [sic] and himself. To further a tenuous analogy, (part of) the genius behind "Drift" is that he makes you laugh at the insane murder-suicide climax AND feel horrified at the same time.

The old Reading Someone's Mind in Order to Bring Them Down a Notch and Portray Them as a Buffoon trick. Classy work, stylus; not lazy at all.

On a different note, did anyone else think the end of the BBC Culture Show interview was as hilarious as I thought it was?

"So, will we have to wait another ten years for your next album?" "Gosh, I hope not. [chuckles] I mean, I might not even be alive in ten years. [thoughtfully] Probably no--" [cut to commercial]

But, what a record. Is it just me who sees it as a lost Goth album? I'm sure I saw bands that sounded a bit like this in the late 80s.

I find "Clara" very moving, in its condemnation of the horde's vendetta mentality and, if you like, celebration of a seemingly true love (at least on Petacci's part). the 'controversial' subject matter is a huge plus in my eyes (and, I suspect, too much to bear for the Italian music/cultural scene even to notice - just as it was with the Pasolini-themed "Farmer in the City" on 'Tilt').

My lover loves... :-)

"I can't go on. I go on."
Good old Sam Beckett; he was absolutely OTM about me...

2. (Italian xpost)

Yes, it so happens I've a bit to say about "Clara" from that perspective, my mother's family having been caught up in the thick of it at the time. So that particular song cuts deeper with me than it would with others, you're absolutely right about that.

it's not the unrelenting deathiness itself, as this is quite tolerable in a book which can be put down whenever, and with a film wheere the eyes can wander about the image. and i can happily play the ligeti requiem playing whilst tidying some papers, but having just one voice, that voice, enunciating it, is too much somehow.