Walker is a genuine enigma, a pop idol who metamorphosed into an arthouse balladeer before excavating deep into the avant garde. Drawing on Germany’s Lieder music tradition, his songs are more like tonal poems these days; musicians are rarely allowed to practise their parts, while common elements of popular music, such as repeated motifs and melodies, are notable only by their absence.

Climate of Hunter and Tilt, his last two releases, are among Walker’s poorest selling albums, but The Drift could run them close because it makes no concessions, despite superficially inviting song titles such as Clara, Jesse and A Lover Loves.

Built around minimalist blocks of sound — bursts of strings, rasps of woodwind and dense, arrhythmic percussion — it demands much of the listener. The opening track, Cossacks Are, is a relatively gentle introduction, with its picked guitar and urgent drums. Clara, meanwhile, is a 12-minute movement replete with lurching strings, Hammer horror piano chords and Egyptian trumpet. Jesse turns out to be a reference to Elvis Presley’s stillborn twin, transformed into a symbol of the post- September 11 American Nightmare via a threatening distortion of Jailhouse Rock’s opening riff. Hand Me Ups is a musical Passion Play with clashing sheets of metal, pipe squeals, hand- claps and lyrics about nails penetrating skin. The Escape, meanwhile, is so loaded with suspense that it makes you jump. And finally, at the close, when Walker appears to offer a conventional ballad in A Lover Loves, he pierces the mood by whispering “psst!” like a child in a library.

Revisiting Tilt recently, it sounded dark, visceral and vital. The Drift initially seems equally, if not more, impenetrable — but shapes do materialise slowly through the vistas of sound. In this sense it is about extrapolating Walker’s intention, which is why it bears virtually no relation to the simple arithmetic of pop. His reputation may well count in his favour here, but Walker cannot be accused of resting on it.

MIKE PATTENDEN