This is not an album for everybody. It took me a few listens to even get into it but it is so layered and twisted it forces the listener to listen on its own terms not yours. I love artists that make me pay attention and not just give me pleasent music to do the dishes by. I wouldn't say Scott Walker is a genius, but he is an artist with a particular goal known only to himself and no one else and thats the way it should be. He is not interested on trying to recapture the past like Brian Wilson he is about looking ahead. If you loved "Tilt" then this is its sucessor.

With the Drift in my opinion, Scott Walker turns definately into a sci-fi-monster that are we. So personal that it's disturbing.

Otto Dix, the early 20th-century German expressionist artist once said: "All art is exorcism. I paint dreams and visions too; the dreams and visions of my time. Painting is the effort to produce order; order in yourself. There is much chaos in me, much chaos in our time."

Not all art may be exorcism, but Dix's statement certainly seems to apply to Scott Walker's most recent sound-with-text album, Drift. Since it is an exorcism, many pieces in the album address the issues that were troubling the artist. Some issues are more universal whereas some issues are more personal. On the whole, the Drift seems to deal with humans' cruelty and brutality against their fellow humans.

Examples: "Cossacks Are" ironically expresses the culture industry's unabashed commodification and reification of an artist; "Clara" dramatically tells the story of how a street mob treated of the dead bodies of Mussolini and Claretta Pettacci -- as objects like pork or beef ("The breasts are still heavy/ The legs long and straight/ The upper lip remains short ...") as manifested in Benito Mussolini's dream (I think Claretta is compared to the loyal Swallow in Oscar Wilde's "The Happy Prince" - "Clara" does not present a simplistic world view); "Jesse" addresses the horrific event of 9/11 as a nightmare dreamt by Elvis Presley, representing American masses (I wonder if Scott Walker was inspired by Jean Baudrillard's statement: "That we have dreamed of this event, that everybody without exception has dreamt of it, because everybody must dream of the destruction of any power hegemonic to that degree, -- this is unacceptable for Western moral conscience, but it is still a fact, and one which is justly measured by the pathetic violence of all those discourses which attempt to erase it" - translated by. Rachel Bloul); "Jolson and Jones," with a beginning stanza evocative of the famous first stanza of Eliot's The Waste Land, conveys the human brutality hidden under the banality of everyday social exchange in a place permeated with death, disease and decay instead of rebirth of the springtime.

I highly recommend this album to anybody who appreciates a challenging artistic experience.

Psst. With The Drift, Scott Walker has made the best record of the new century. Psst. That's in keeping for the man who made some of the best records of the last century, especially Scott 3 and Tilt. Psst. These aren't waltzes for dodo's. Psst. The strains of eeriness heard even on his recordings with The Walker Brothers are now fullblown and realized. Throughout this bleak soundscape, there are touches of absurdist humor that certify an artist at his peak dealing with an inane and indifferent world. Psst.

Any piece deemed "disturbing" by Opeth's frontman Mikael Akerfeldt is worthy of a listen...and i'm none the worse for wear after relenting to this visceral barrage of the senses.

I can't speak for Tilt or any other of Walker's "works" but this "particular" construction of sound hits with the "subtlety" of a jackhammer. That a man of 63 years can harbor such cynical views of life "and" the ability to harness it in "said" manner is quite disturbing.

Ironically, nearly all reviews offer critical acclaim for this sinister segue into the mouth of madness. The "method" involves maniacal bass and string orchestrations alongside "certain" aural perversions of meat, wood, cinderblocks, (brayed) donkeys, and "other" matters of dissonance in sound.

Walker offers no apologies, compromises or comfort throughout this disparate, disjointed and claustrophobic soundscape. For sixty-eight minutes, the listener is pummeled black and blue with a relentless and palpable sense of danger. It seems the precise attempt of "The Drift" is to unearth the primordial terror lying just beneath the surface and to unhinge the listener with frightening theatrics amidst the apprehension of dead silence.

For this mental deconstruction to manifest itself, one must first be careful to set the appropriate listening level for this analog recording. You'll get the point rather quickly. And if you are feeling particularly bold, pass those sixty-eight minutes with a good pair of headphones after midnight in a dark room. This will be an experience you won't soon forget...if you make it through to the end that is.

In summary, "The Drift" is a shameless, avant-garde presentation of Walker's singular vision, delivered with a certain degree of malice and measured tenacity. And while this disc will certainly be an acquired taste, it is interesting enough to own and peruse on "fitting" occasions. In a word...a keeper.