scott walker review on pitchfork

review of scott walker's the drift on pitchfork

i don't feel like i trashed walker's album or anything; i was simply giving my first impression of the disc as i listened to it. here's a glowing review from the old pitchfork, which makes the excellent point that "pretentious" doesn't necessarily mean "bullshit." but i stand by my opinion that this is a record that asks, "how much art can you take?" and i don't think anyone should feel bad if the answer is "less than this."

on a separate note, i caught sigur ros at the orpheum last night, and thought they were spectac. about four songs into their set, i was beginning to lose interest a bit since every song followed essentially the same dynamic pattern: slow build to climax, drop it back down, build it up again. i don't know the names of their songs, but there's one from agaetis byrjun that has a little flute melody that comes in about 2/3 of the way through, and starting with that one, i was quite impressed. the thickness of their sound is almost unbelievable, but they also stripped it down really nicely partway through and played a song with all the lights down save for a few that were linked into the sound levels from the mics. the result was a flock of lights that would brighten when a chord was hit, then flicker out as the sustain died. a great show for the orpheum's set-up, all things considered. the one disappointing aspect was the ruining of what could have been a beautiful moment of silence. at one point in one of their songs, the entire band and the video that was being shown behind them came to a halt, with all the members frozen completely still. the silence lasted about ten second before someone shouted, "woo-hoo!" and then another person piped up. and then someone took the opportunity to tell the band they were fucking awesome. kind of lame, folks. i know it's a bit much to expect people to shut up completely for a show, but instead of a beautiful 30 seconds of silence, we got a display of just how uncomfortable we are with pauses. why is that? why can't we just let an empty space be an empty space?