Tom Waits may be 61 but his voice can still fell a grandad at 50 paces. Strip bark from trees. Curdle milk. The man's daily routine must involve gargling with barbed wire. How else could he achieve that flayed larynx sound, that ragged howl, that boiling swirl of gas and fog?
His 18th album, Bad As Me, sounds at first listen much like most of the others (post Swordfishtrombones). There's the stompers and the maudlin ballads (brawlers and bawlers). There's the circus waltz. The Brecht and Weill mutter. And it all sounds - initially - like business as usual.
Except business as usual for Waits is so outlandishly extreme, involves so many musical and lyrical surprises and oddities, that this album, like so many of the others, has a freshness and excitement that is testament to Waits's continued love of writing and recording.
And besides, this album is different. It's no surprise that trusted guitar-throttler Marc Ribot appears. What is unexpected, however, is the appearance, on Last Leaf, of Keith Richards. Singing! The two venerable gentlemen, huddled round a mic, rasping in unison. Their voices, raised together, sounding like a government anti-smoking campaign. Waits, particularly, wheezing emphysemically through each chorus.
On Kiss Me we get a slight return to earlier jazzier stuff. And Get Lost achieves a jiving, jittery 50's hysteria. Less Louis Armstrong, more Little Richard. And even, on Talking At The Same Time, we're treated to the ear-rinsing experience of Mr Waits singing in falsetto, sounding not unlike a crazed Curtis Mayfield.
As always with Tom Waits, no matter how gruff and earthy the overall sound is, there's also a skewed romanticism and yearning. Amid all the jangling angularity of the sounds there's a poignant vulnerability. A fragile aspiration for something just out of reach. To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, Bad As Me might sound like the gutter, but it's reaching for the stars.
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