Reviews by kuvien

First, there's the album cover. Something critics of Waits might point to and say, "See see! This is what I'm talking about. The pretension." Waits definitely was going for a cover that would represent the film noir mood of his music up to this point. But it's all an act, right? I mean, he's just some guy who grew up in a normal family in a suburban California neighborhood. Right? My rebuttal is: And? Is there no place for theater, for adopting a persona, in music? Waits deliberately lived in neighborhoods that reflected not only the poverty but the bohemian cool that pervades his music. And he's not just a singer; he's an actor, too, so he's got that theatrical sense about him. That's why his live shows use props. Bette Midler guests on this album... perhaps Waits' first misstep. Like his other albums, this one swims in drink. Funny thing about the cover, though: the woman thought she was Waits' girlfriend, but she wasn't. She was just one of the Troubador slags.

How many times have I heard this album by this point? It's like seeing the face of an old friend, getting a bit misty-eyed, and enjoying a warm hug from him. This whole album is an embrace. And he's got stories for you..all the things that happened since last you met. He's got an eclectic style to his storytelling, too, one you never get tired of hearing. He's just as comfortable going acoustic guitar as he is at sitting behind the piano and plinking out the blues. But Waits is at his best once he's got a few drinks in him and his music turns slowly like an inebriated carousel.

This is a long CMJ radio network interview with Tom Waits, featuring tracks from the album of the same name. This isn't an album, just an interview in which Waits explains what the album is about and the process of its creation and production. He says the albums started with the title, so in that sense, this is a concept. He wanted songs that would fit the title "Bone Machine", so songs that evoke a sense of horror, songs about the inevitability of death, since it is a fact that we all die screaming. And not only us, but everything. The earth first, and eventually the universe. There's no escape. One thing I love about this interview is how he describes songs like they're entities: he describes the creative process in such beautiful metaphorical terms, like when he talks about how a song is "sick", meaning a song isn't working in a certain context or a song is unfinished... it's "sick", and Waits, as a kind of doctor, has to diagnose the song's sickness and help it get better. He also talks about the listener's relationship to songs, saying that an individual song is like a bar of soap. You can hold it in your hand, and sometimes your relationship with the song lasts only as long as a bar of soap, and once it's gone, you move on to the next song. He discusses how his performance aesthetic is changing, too, going from a guy who sat at a piano to a more physical, animal show and how it's connected to the spirit of music that, in some ways, can work as a poltergeist. Perhaps this is connected to Waits getting older and getting angrier, which is why he thinks his percussion has improved. Because he gets to hit shit with more gusto. Waits mentions religion so many times in this interview, which I find interesting, as he's getting it from both his wife and his mother, and that influence finds its way onto the album in frightening clarity.

It's Thursday night and close enough to the weekend for a drink. Besides, a little fire in your belly might shake off this damp chill. All her usual bull and excuses and best intentions are scribbled on a rain-soaked postcard in your mailbox. You take it and climb the stairs on dreams, and after your drink, you think you might fall asleep if only the sirens would start.

I would kill to see one of these dark cabarets live, this one being songs from the Waits/Brennan theater piece, Woyzeck. The beauty in his resignation, the whole tragic human story played out by a marionette, Calliope caught in an unguarded moment of disharmony. Also, can anyone sing a lullaby like Tom Waits? He can tuck me in anytime he wants and tell me stories about how miserable everything and everyone is.

The recordings here were taken from two shows Waits did on separate days in November of 1987. Unlike Nighthawks, however, this is a true live album, part of the overall Franks Wild Years tour, not something contrived for a studio audience. Though Waits never goes full Bowie when it comes to on-stage roleplaying, the singer did adopt for a short time a kind of alter ego in Frank, referencing how he torched his house (in that short, spoken word track) before taking off for the big time. In keeping with the theatricality of the Frank concept, several dramatic audio effects were added in post-production, not only audience applause but also snapping fingers, boot stomping, train whistles, gunshots, and whatnot. Disregarding the post-production shenanigans, though, I find it interesting how some of these songs are re-imagined in a live setting. Waits was fascinated by the idea of the street preacher, and some of that comes out here. Can I get an "amen"?!

All aboard Waits’ latest (last) studio album! The man is a national treasure, that’s all there is to it. He succeeds at pretty much everything he tries, even here in his 60s, still kicking ass like he did at the beginning of his career, because he based his style on a timeless cool. As always, he’s sometimes smooth as hell, other times wacky and not giving a single fuck. I wonder if this album will end up being the last leaf on his tree. I feel like there's a little bit of everything from Waits' career on this album, from the gypsy rusty-accordion sounds to the growling mud-wrestling vocals to the lonely heartbroken crooning to the feeling of spinning around in circles while staring up into the night sky of a pitiless universe where you then fall down drunk not on wine but on the inevitability of death.

A portrait of a woman painted in only two hues: regret and memory. A dusty storybook written in blood. A peepshow from Hades.

Is there a greater opening track on any album ever, a truer poetic strike to the eyes that'll make you weep through the rest of the 48-minute journey? This entire album is wrapped in madness and death--is the narrator actually singing from beyond the grave (from beyond the rabbit hole)? Nothing creepier than a violin accompanying your soul on its descent into Hell, driven by suicide. Don't worry, though. They've got a jazz bar down there where you, being disembodied, will fit right in. Listen to the champagne laughs, gaze upon the strangled ebony curls, and know what it was once to be alive. This record's got history that goes beyond the mere studio production. Most of these songs were written for Waits' play, Alice, that he wrote with the same theater director who collaborated with him on The Black Rider. The stage Alice debuted in 1992, ten years before this album. So in a sense this album is more rooted in Waits' Island years, the little sister to Bone Machine and The Black Rider.

I listened to this album with a team of bronies, and I came to understand that they really like poop jokes.

Basically what the album title says: what medieval music will sound like in the future and now sounds like with medieval times far behind us. The wheel of fortune turns, and though you may clutch at your falling crown, you cannot hold onto it forever.

This group of four musicians made a studio album of neo-medieval folk back in 2003 and didn't do anything until they dropped four EPs in 2020 and then this archival live album in 2021. All the music that the Medievals lived and worked, we simply sit and enjoy, applauding at the end. All ritual and ceremony is bound up into a tidy little concert, and it's lovely. Recorded in 2002 in the ruins of Saint Lars Church, Visby.

One of my strongest connections to this album is falling asleep to it. That's not a bad thing. Quite the opposite. This album really immersed me in its sound, so when the last track, "Almanac", goes nuts with all those layered, echoing vocals at the end, I snapped out of my sleep and fell into a deep enchantment.

Performed on location in a foundry! No musicians required.

Someone won't stop hammering. Time to move to the countryside... follow that opera singer who bailed at the beginning!

A turned-over washing machine still spinning, still unable to get the grease out of your coveralls.

Drink copious amounts of cheap gin at the weekend and pretend you're still at work!

Groovy, infectious, and everything you'd expect from Ghanaian highlife in the 70s. Two longer tracks on side A, three shorter tracks on side B, the former celebrating, the latter hypnotizing.

Is it the ayahuasca or the power of the poetry that's causing the listener to soul-into the local wildlife?

I just love it when people raised on religion have to wrestle with it, and what's more punk than playing explicitly religious music to a punk crowd, pissing them off in the process? As Brian Ritchie said, "it’s more punk to defy your audience than to play what they want to hear." Amazing that some high-schooler wrote all these songs.

“This album is an affirmation of both my origin story and who I am today. I see my life and my music as a collaboration of improvisation and intention all in the spirit of community and joy.” - Villarreal

That pretty much sums up the whole feel of this album, a debut for a man who's been around music his whole life, has shifted genres as easily as he moved countries, a man who leads scenes as easily as he controls grooves. A bit of the urban contemporary mixed with the charm of the traditional.