Capsule Music Review - Scott Walker

Scott Walker - The Drift

Scott Walker is surely one of the strangest stories in pop history. Walker (born Scott Engel) was a member of the Walker Brothers, a band of American non-siblings consciously modeled on the Righteous Brothers with a similar sound, little known in the United States but at one time huge stars in the UK. Their biggest hit was the much-admired "The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore."

Anyway, so the band breaks up and Scott retains the Walker surname and starts releasing solo albums at uneven intervals. Several albums later, Walker is releasing uncompromising and well-nigh unlistenable slow-paced sludge-rock with coal-black lyrics, something like a cross between Tom Waits and the Swans. It's as if Paul McCartney emerged from the studio once every seven years with an album of grindcore.

This album may well be a work of genius, as most critics seem to think, but you couldn't tell by me. If you squint your ears really hard you may start to get a glimpse of an actual point to this music, but the strain was too much for me.