Scott Walker's 2006 album The Drift remains one of the most unsettling records in popular music, and it is available to US listeners on Bandcamp and most major streaming services, including YouTube Music, Apple Music, Qobuz, Deezer, and Spotify. The album explores death, disease, and tragedy, and it has become a fixture of Halloween-season listening for those who prefer genuine dread to novelty songs.
Walker's lyrics draw on visceral historical and personal material. The record includes graphic descriptions of the hanging of Benito Mussolini and his mistress Clara Petacci. Walker also sings about 9/11, his stillborn twin brother, and the Srebrenica genocide. By any measure, the subject matter is as dark as an album gets.
Musically, The Drift sits closer to the score of an Ari Aster film than to anything recognizable as pop. Seasick guitars in the verses of "Jesse" give way to dissonant strings that drone oppressively over the chorus. The low-bitrate MP3 noise that opens "Clara" is physically jarring, and the track allegedly features the sound of his percussionist punching a pig carcass as part of the rhythm track.
The album's structure is equally disorienting. Songs stop abruptly, linger in uncomfortable silence, then erupt in bursts of mechanical noise. Animal bleating, foley work, and atonal orchestra sections grind against Walker's warble. Nothing is ever quite in tune, and getting through the record in a single sitting can be difficult without being in a very particular mood.
For listeners who stay with it, the experience is rewarding in an unusual way. Some songs and performances are so beautiful they send shivers down the spine or raise goosebumps. The Drift produces the opposite effect: an involuntary physical reaction that is more shudder than shiver. It makes the skin crawl.
The Drift follows two distinct traditions of seasonal music. There are fun, occasionally goofy songs like "The Monster Mash" and John Carpenter's "Halloween Theme." Then there is the genuinely terrifying, a category that includes Throbbing Gristle, The Body, and Scott Walker's The Drift.
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