Scott Walker - The Drift (4AD)
5/5
By: Thomas Hannan
Dig, if you will, a picture:
Scott Walker! You remember him, Gran! "The sun ain't gonna shine aaaanymoooore..." and all that! You loved that fella! This'll do fine for over dinner. Something I can focus on whilst the rest of them discuss whether the cabbage is overdone or not, but won't make my relatives want to question whether what I do in life is just listen to fast paced, grating noises.
I reach for 'The Drift', and watch as my beloved Grandmother's eyes melt in her very head, as one's sonic hero of yesteryear turns in to a yelping, petrifying ghoul. Truly, this makes Wolf Eyes sound like Razorlight. Even I might want to turn it off. But wait...
'The Drift' is the best record released so far this year. It's the most uncomfortable, ominous, terrifying piece of music in a collection full of the stuff. Days in, I am still wary of listening to it alone, or without adequate lighting, but sometimes find it's simply impossible not to, given it's addictive nature. Walker's voice, once the coolest croon of a free love generation, has developed a tenuous wobble, a fear of its own sound that suits the rest of the surroundings perfectly. Imagine Liars' recent behemoth 'Drums Not Dead' if all the drums were removed from it (if drum was extinct), if all that were left were long expanses of desperately tense sound interspersed with cryptic clues as to horrific goings on just over the horizon. Imagine the noise that's happening in your head just before you snap out of a particularly worrying dream. That's 'The Drift'.
Despite being confrontational and wholly unlike anything else you'll own, it doesn't take long to get in to. Things are stretched out over such long spaces, moments easy to pinpoint so rare, that they become instantly memorable simply because they are so few and far between. All the rest does is build tension, thirteen minute opuses like the haunting 'Clara' drifting through you without you questioning its length once, large expanses of dim, humming orchestras all that holds the record from falling over in to the brink of silence more often than not.
"I'm the only one left alive. I'm the only one left alive" - repeat in a haunting whimper until silence. Walker only references the self, as he does here at the end of 'Jesse', to emphasise loneliness. 'The Drift' works from being a deeply impersonal record, removed from humanity in both sound and sentiment, acting like a window in to an entirely alien psychological state. It buzzes and clicks, sounds you struggle to place, but imagine as the products of machines which do not wish you well.
'Buzzers'. "Polish the fork and stick the fork in him... he's done, boys" - repeat until overwhelmed with dread for reasons you cannot place. To recommend it feels bizarre, as it is encouraging one to undergo some sturdy, elongated torment. But recommend its every painful, distressing, sublime moment I shall, whilst begging you not to come back a shell of your former self, complaining you weren't warned. Such is the thick darkness of 'The Drift', the only ray of light one can really take from it is that one of such genius capable of its creation is still making music.
The sun is not going to shine any more.
Artists in this article: Scott Walker
Your Feedback
Login to post your comment