Real Gone Tom Waits Artist
EAN: 0045778754816
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 son… mais…
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 {|blues|}, 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 {|turntables|}. 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 {|turntables|} 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 {|tango|} 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 {|blues|} 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 {|ballad|} {|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. ~ Thom Jurek Music>Music>Vinyl>Pop Rock Vinyl>Pop Rock Vinyl, Ada Core >3<
