No easy listening feat by any stretch of the imagination, Scott Walker’s The Drift … is, simply, a work of staggering emotional sentiment and complexity that few will be able to match. It defies explanation. –Michael Crumsho, Dusted Magazine
For a moment, listening to the music of Scott Walker can be like listening to a smoky old jazz tune. Then it can turn operatic, with Walker transforming into a baritone backed by a full orchestra. Then you might hear gospel music. Then it’s French melancholia. Then it’s a driving rock beat. Then you’re teleported across time and history, and the thundering march of a Roman legion quickens the blood in your veins. In the song Clara
It’s like a dream—or a nightmare.
Take the song Bouncer See Bouncer, from the album Tilt
The lyrics tell you nothing by themselves. The words must be heard as utterance to be understood.
You just have to listen to it.
Spared
I’ve been spared
all the nickling
all the dimeingSpared
I’ve been spared
all the powder
on a trumpet of GabrielDon’t play that song for me
you won’t play that song for me
The song (and it’s only “song” if you include whale-singing as an alternate form of pop music) seeps in as though it were your own breath. You don’t see it coming through the lyrics alone, but with the music you feel it like the trumpet of Gabriel right through the marrow.
Walker’s hypnotic vibrato drifts and condenses across the unfamiliar landscape of an underworld. You feel your heart beat in every lash of the drum banging in your ears. You feel excited, afraid. It’s closing in, whatever it is.
You’re dreaming of a song somewhere between Broadway and the violent gates of Hell.
Lemon Bloody Cola
gonna sponge you down
How could it be that I’ve never heard of Scott Walker before now? After all, he’s 67 years old. He’s been around since I was in kindergarten. His single with the Walker Brothers, The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore, was a hit record in 1966. His band toured Britain, headlining venues with Cat Stevens and Jimmy Hendrix. At one time, the Walker Brothers’ fan base exceeded that of the Fab Four. His mop top alone was enough to send an army of teenage girls into a sweaty riot.
It didn’t last long. The band had dissolved by 1967, and Scott Walker’s solo career as a crooner faded to black a few years later.
In the past two decades he’s only released 2 albums.
Two amazing albums: Tilt
What do Seoul/Sudan have in common?
Both start with an S
-Cue
Famine is a tall tower
A building left in the night
Jesse are you listening?
It casts its ruins in shadows
Under Memphis moonlight
Jesse are you listening?
Six feet of foetus
Flung at sparrows in the sky
That’s just how it is, watching Elvis dream of 9/11 with his ear to the Memphis prairie. Elvis, the pop culture monument, and his twin brother Jesse, dead at child birth, sailing with 3000 lost souls across the River Styx.
Cymbals crash and the dust rises above the city in black and white and sepia tones. Reality, memories, history, and dreams turn and blend and collapse like phantoms.
If you have no opening in your heart for the mystery of consciousness, then you won’t find Walker very interesting. Or you may find him disturbing. Perhaps deeply disturbing. If so, you would do well to stay away. It’s too weird for a certain mind. But it’s nectar for searchers like me.
“Essentially, I’m really trying to find a way to talk about the things that cannot be spoken of,” Walker told the Guardian. “I cannot fake that or take short cuts. There is an absurdity there, too, of course, and I hope that people pick up on that. Without the humour, it would just be heavy and boring. I hope people get that. If you’re not connecting with the absurdity, you shouldn’t be there.”
Got that right, Scott Walker.
The Drift and Tilt: Five glorious stars with a bullet. *****
Jesse (The Drift):
Cossacks Are (The Drift):
Scott Walker interview on youtube
Songs available on iTunes:
Full albums:
Tilt:
The Drift:
Mike LaSalle is the publisher of MensNewsDaily.com. He writes on science, media and popular culture.
