DRIFTING BLUES

Walker provided notes on each of the tracks, explaining, for example, that ‘Jesseâ?� (referring to Elvis Presley’s stillborn twin Jesse Garon), is his Sept. 11 song and ‘starts with the basses sounding like planes coming while substituting the ‘Jailhouse Rock’ drum riff with whispered ‘pows’ for planes hitting the towers.â?� The likelihood of any reviewer picking this up without Walker’s assistance is low. Even with it, the song is open to interpretation. These songs were written and performed in private code.

Walker’s forsaken his Tony Bennett-on-acid approach for the strangulated vocal tone he used on his previous album, 1995’s Tilt. But where Tilt leaned on the digital and the symphonic, The Drift strips everything to its barest essentials, despite the fact that the album’s musical credits are lengthy and much of the album is orchestrated. The entire set feels like a lonely, macabre ride down a highway to nowhere, lights occasionally flashing, rain slickening the road, phrases poking out ominously: ‘It’s hard to pick the worst moment,â?� ‘I’m the only one left alive,â?� ‘I’ll punch a donkey in the streets of Galway,â?� ‘world about to end.â?� The entire effect is, as intended, draining, like a soundtrack to the apocalypse.

Time will decide where to place this idiosyncratic revelry. Right now, it belongs on the family mantel, looking down at you with all the force of its Big Brother eyes.