On Real Gone, Tom Waits walks a fraying tightrope. By utterly eliminating one of the cornerstone elements of his sound -- keyboards -- he has also removed his safety net. With songwriting and production partner Kathleen Brennan, he strips away almost everything conventional from these songs, taking them down to the essences of skeletal rhythms, blasted and guttural lues, razor-cut rural folk music, and the rusty-edge poetry and craft of songwriting itself. His cast includes guitarists Marc Ribot and Harry Cody, bassist/guitarist Larry Taylor, bassist Les Claypool, and percussionists Brain and Casey Waits (Tom's son), the latter of whom also doubles on urntables. This does present problems, such as on the confrontational opener, "Top of the Hill." Waits uses his growling, grunting vocal atop Ribot's monotonously funky single-line riff and Casey's urntables to become a human beatbox offering ridiculously nonsensical lyrics. It's a throwaway, and the album would have been better had it been left off entirely. But it's also a canard, a sleight-of-hand strategy he's employed before. The jewels shine from the mud immediately after. The mutated swamp ango of "Hoist That Rag" has stuttered clangs and quakes for drums, decorated by distorted Latin power chords and riffs from Ribot, along with thundering deep bass from Claypool. On the ten-plus minute "Sins of My Father," Cody's spooky banjo walks with Taylor's low-strung bass and Waits' shimmering reverbed guitar as he ominously croons, revealing a rigged game of "star-spangled glitter" where "justice wears suspenders and a powdered wig." It's part revelation, part East of Eden, and part backroom political culture framed by the eve of the apocalypse. It's hunted, hypnotic, and spooky.
In stripping away convention, Waits occasionally lets his songs go to extremes with absurd simplicity, such as on "Don't Go into That Barn," a musical cousin to his spoken "What's He Building?" from Mule Variations. But there's also the downright riotous squall of "Shake It," which sounds like an insane carny barker jamming with R.L. Burnside, or the riotous raging lues of "Baby Gonna Leave Me." There are "straight" narratives such as "How's It Gonna End," with its slow and brooding beat storyline, and the moving murder allad "Dead and Lovely," with its drooping, shambolic elegance. There's the spoken word "Circus," with its wispy spindly frame that features Waits on chamberlain. And "Metropolitan Glide" feels like a hell-bent duet between James Brown and Captain Beefheart's Magic Band, followed by the fractured, busted-love, ranting-at-God pain that rips through "Make It Rain." The tender "Green Grass" is among Waits' finest broken love songs; it's movingly rendered by a character who could have resided in one of William Kennedy's novels. The set closes with "Day After Tomorrow," featured on MoveOn.org's Future Soundtrack for America. It is one of the most insightful and understated antiwar songs to have been written in decades. It contains not a hint of banality or sentiment in its folksy articulation. Real Gone is another provocative moment for Waits, one that has problems, but then, all his records do. His excesses, however, do nothing to cloud the stellar achievements of his risk-taking vision and often brilliant execution.
I have to re post these thoughts on one of the last concerts I attended. I write this disclaimer that there possibly is not a bigger Tom Waits fan than I. I own every album, many bootlegs, and have had the good fortune to see him in concert twice. This was posted as more of a reply to many of the salivating fanboys on another blog:I have to say I was a little disappointed - only because I ha...
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one of my favorite songs one of my favorite songs
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Recently I rekindled my relationship with Tom Waits. Stories told by the soul, from the gut. Teeth flashing, eyes closed.....all the passion of a torrid love affair in a dirty hotel room. He's the kind of man that could make sinning a blessing. Perhaps a bourbon between friends in a smoke filled room, scratchy voice with meaning.
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I love that Tom Waits was on The Daily Show last night.I also love that the "interview" basically consisted of Jon explaining to him, in detail, why he's the greatest thing to happen to music in the last 50 years or so, if not ever. Kind of reminded me why Jon was my number one celebrity crush when I was a teenager, though also a terrible interviewer most of the time.Speaking of my crushes and...
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as I am sitting here, listing on lala and listening to the ipod on shuffle, I had an inspiration. Just got this new speedy CD burner, and a copy of a live show from chicago of Mr. Waits' latest tour, First five to mogmail me get copies - possibly including cover art, we'll have to see how creative I feel. You can leave me your street address in the mogmail, or if you don't want to do that, I'll...
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Greetings all,It's a cold cold night here in San Francisco. I can't think of a betterway to warm up then by snuggling up to glow of the computer monitor towrite yall this note. I'm still recovering from the life-changing pilgrimage I made last weekto see Tom Waits in Chicago. Pure mysterious genius. The man danceswith his influences but never takes them home. He needs not thegimmicks that fram...
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Now that they fixed the client for this biz, I thought I'd give it an actual try-out. I do a lot of actual blogging over at my livejournal, but I always dig new ways to find music, so maybe this place will be a good idea.Hard to say.
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I keep playing the song "Green Grass" by Tom Waits non-stop. For those who are unfamiliar with Mr. Waits, he's a pretty cool cat. The man has been making music for over 36 years, and has developed a loyal cult following. He is currently signed to -Anti records, the same label with which one of my favorite bands, Man Man, is also signed. In fact, Man Man frontman Honus Honus' vocal style is ...
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as I am sitting here, listing on lala and listening to the ipod on shuffle, I had an inspiration. Just got this new speedy CD burner, and a copy of a live show from chicago of Mr. Waits' latest tour, First five to mogmail me get copies - possibly including cover art, we'll have to see how creative I feel. You can leave me your street address in the mogmail, or if you don't want to do that, I'll...
More >
with the advent of the illegal, downloadable mp3 it became a lot easier to get sick of music. sometimes i hate everything in my itunes library.then... i listen to tom waits. because i hated him already.
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I love that Tom Waits was on The Daily Show last night.I also love that the "interview" basically consisted of Jon explaining to him, in detail, why he's the greatest thing to happen to music in the last 50 years or so, if not ever. Kind of reminded me why Jon was my number one celebrity crush when I was a teenager, though also a terrible interviewer most of the time.Speaking of my crushes and...
More >
I have to re post these thoughts on one of the last concerts I attended. I write this disclaimer that there possibly is not a bigger Tom Waits fan than I. I own every album, many bootlegs, and have had the good fortune to see him in concert twice. This was posted as more of a reply to many of the salivating fanboys on another blog:I have to say I was a little disappointed - only because I ha...
More >
Greetings all,It's a cold cold night here in San Francisco. I can't think of a betterway to warm up then by snuggling up to glow of the computer monitor towrite yall this note. I'm still recovering from the life-changing pilgrimage I made last weekto see Tom Waits in Chicago. Pure mysterious genius. The man danceswith his influences but never takes them home. He needs not thegimmicks that fram...
More >
Now that they fixed the client for this biz, I thought I'd give it an actual try-out. I do a lot of actual blogging over at my livejournal, but I always dig new ways to find music, so maybe this place will be a good idea.Hard to say.
More >
Recently I rekindled my relationship with Tom Waits. Stories told by the soul, from the gut. Teeth flashing, eyes closed.....all the passion of a torrid love affair in a dirty hotel room. He's the kind of man that could make sinning a blessing. Perhaps a bourbon between friends in a smoke filled room, scratchy voice with meaning.
More >
one of my favorite songs one of my favorite songs
More >
| Title | Lyrics | Buy |
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| 1 Top of the Hill |
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| 2 Hoist That Rag |
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| 3 Sins of My Father |
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| 4 Shake It |
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| 5 Don't Go into That Barn |
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| 6 How's It Gonna End |
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| 7 Metropolitan Glide |
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| 8 Dead and Lovely |
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| 9 Circus |
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| 10 Trampled Rose |
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| 11 Green Grass |
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| 12 Baby Gonna Leave Me |
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| 13 Clang Boom Steam |
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| 14 Make It Rain |
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| 15 Day After Tomorrow |
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| 16 [Untitled Track] |
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Click to purchase…
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 "Real Gone")
