Psst, Psst, Psst, Psst

Random thought-spill on:

Scott Walker – The Drift
4AD

This is much less abstruse and hard to approach than this I Love Music thread made me think it would be… I thought maybe it'd be a chore to get through and after I'd managed I'd not like it and think that I was missing something or that it was my fault. It's comparatively POP compared to what I'd expected and an easier listen than Tilt.

It sounds like a horror film soundtrack (1976-1983) mixed with the more rocking end of post-rock and sometimes even bits of the first two Black Sabbath albums (I even thought I heard him mention black masses but I think that was wishful thinking as I can’t see it in the lyrics) (and obv. horror soundtracks and this both draw on modernist string composition.) I could even imagine some Relapse Records band or Norwegian black metallers gone ambient/folk ending up somewhere like this, but from a completely different direction. I mean Walker does like Nine Inch Nails and Mogwai…

It’s got a lot of forward motion and rock energy for a record titled “the Drift”.

I thought the lyric fragments that I’d read before release were, I dunno, corny but they're much funnier on record and, I'm guessing, deliberately so—no-one would really write a song about Elvis' twin or use "like what happened in America" as a refrain w/out tongue in cheek these days would they?

Also, “WHAT’S UP DOC?” And the donkey is FUCKING GREAT.

When Scott sings "A man came up toward the body/and poked it with a stick" I think of Crispin Glover in Rivers Edge.

There should be an instrumental version of this record.

I think that this might work as sex music. That’s probably why I’m getting none.

It’s really fucking good.