TOM WAITS - Real Gone

Several points with this record seem so clear and obvious or have been talked about so much in other places, that I decided to put them right into the first paragraph to get over them and have them done with, which are: First, what Tom Waits does best is being Tom Waits. And that is what he does on this record (once again). If you like the art(ificial) personae of Tom Waits, you’ll like this record and vice versa and the negation and the vice versa negation. Second, there is none of the classical piano of Tom Waits on this record. Therefore you’ll get the growling Tom Waits, the high-pitched Tom Waits, the screaming one, the softly singing one, the speaking one, almost every Tom Waits you’ll have heard on the last records as well. Moreover, lots of the tracks have been pre-produced by Waits himself using nothing but his voice and body sounds in his bathroom. Third, his son Casey is playing turntables and percussion on some of the tracks. Fourth, Marc Ribot is playing guitar and banjo on some of the tracks, which is important to me for being a fan of the unique and original sounds he squelches from his twenty-dollar-junkyard-guitar, but not so much because he would be adding such an outstanding part to the record. Which he does, of course. Finally, fifth, to the chronologists and comparative Waits-ologans “Real Gone” is constantly compared to “Bone Machine”, as if that’ll help you any.

One point I found more interesting and that hasn’t crept up in all the reviews I read (because it is almost impossible to not read reviews when a record by Tom Waits is released) is that there is a lot about country-life in all of the songs. Keeping in mind that Tom Waits has moved to a ranch in the country, recording in a studio set up in the barn, and indulging in the idiosyncrasies and monstrosities that make up the rural life, you’ll get a glimpse of what has shaped this record. From the “cellophane-dark-skie” to “porticoed house of a long dead farm” there is so much open farmlife in there, you’d get to think that Waits has really departed completely from the “nighthawks” of past decades, which have permeated his songs from his folksy-beginnings to the artsy years not so long past. Sure, starting with “Get behind the Mule” and a lot more of the imagery used on “Mule Variations” there has been a lot of farmland-metaphors and country-life-symbols in his songs. But “Mule Variations” was that “classic Tom Waits record”, with the straight blues-rockers and the great ballads (the “grand weepers”). Now he has translated these new influences into his clang and boom comcept first deployed on the aforementioned “Bone Machine”. No more screamed “Going’ Out West”, because he has reached his destination. Now, he’ll “wash the sins of his father” in an epic 11-minute song.[1] No more Sinatra as in “Straight up to the top” but rather Tony Joe White in “Top of the hill”. Plus, there are a lot of axes in this album.

Of course, Tom Wait’s vision of the country and farmlife is filled with dark secrets, cruel deeds and fearsome dreams. The lowdown, the broken, the shotgun-shackers and his own monstrous version of the redneck fill his stories – and truly stories they are after all – like the best of William Faulkner’s novels. Strangely the almost industrial noise and deconstructed blues filled with raudy percussions and numbing repetitions fits the scene. Like the handful of songs that are really alcohol-and-methane-stupors (the drug of choice in places where beer and lighter fluid are more easier to come by than cocaine) that always end up in dancing excessively in the mud in the shine of the headlights of your pick-up truck, e.g. “Shake it” or “Metropolitain Glide”. I heard that Waits likes to call them “cubist funk”, but that is just an obvious trail to lead us astray. It is bareknuckled drunken honky-tonk gone barbarian. Loud, straight and easy to bang along to. The kind of muddy blues-excesses that even Captain Beefheart was always afraid of. (Or the time wasn’t ripe for back then…) Ever listened to a shredder fed with thick bows?

The fact that Tom Waits has never cared where his influences come from both in time or space, or if they are appropriate to our times and musical standards, or what was expected from him, is what I like most about him. Aside from the music, that is. And there are actually plenty good melodies buried within the clatter and the noise.

The record ends on the incredible “Day after tomorrow” which has a fictitious soldier writing home: “"I'm not fighting for justice, I am not fighting for freedom, I am fighting for my life and another day in the world". A political statement to influence the Bush vs Kerry – election? Not really, because the song is so timeless it could have been penned at any time. And that, if nothing else has done already, convinces you that Tom Waits has really left from all the bounds that have chained him to the reality he lived in some years ago. That he is now “real gone”. But hasn’t he with almost every new record?

[1] And there is a long tradition of country- and folk-songs ending gruesomely at river banks or in rivers, from “Banks of the Ohio” down to “Where the wild roses grow”.

TOM WAITS Real gone CD/LP, Anti

The new record by Tom Waits will offer everything avid fans expected and nothing at the same time. And of course, those avid fans will love him for it. But instead of sitting down with a glass of red wine late at night at your favourite listening place in your cozy warm flat, this time you’d rather grab a sixpack of beer, some liquid thinner and drive out into the woods.
Several points with this record seem so clear and obvious or have been talked about so much in other places, that I decided to put them right into the first paragraph to get over them and have them done with, which are: First, what Tom Waits does best is being Tom Waits. And that is what he does on this record (once again). If you like the art(ificial) personae of Tom Waits, you’ll like this record and vice versa and the negation and the vice versa negation. Second, there is none of the classical piano of Tom Waits on this record. Therefore you’ll get the growling Tom Waits, the high-pitched Tom Waits, the screaming one, the softly singing one, the speaking one, almost every Tom Waits you’ll have heard on the last records as well. Moreover, lots of the tracks have been pre-produced by Waits himself using nothing but his voice and body sounds in his bathroom. Third, his son Casey is playing turntables and percussion on some of the tracks. Fourth, Marc Ribot is playing guitar and banjo on some of the tracks, which is important to me for being a fan of the unique and original sounds he squelches from his twenty-dollar-junkyard-guitar, but not so much because he would be adding such an outstanding part to the record. Which he does, of course. Finally, fifth, to the chronologists and comparative Waits-ologans “Real Gone” is constantly compared to “Bone Machine”, as if that’ll help you any. One point I found more interesting and that hasn’t crept up in all the reviews I read (because it is almost impossible to not read reviews when a record by Tom Waits is released) is that there is a lot about country-life in all of the songs. Keeping in mind that Tom Waits has moved to a ranch in the country, recording in a studio set up in the barn, and indulging in the idiosyncrasies and monstrosities that make up the rural life, you’ll get a glimpse of what has shaped this record. From the “cellophane-dark-skie” to “porticoed house of a long dead farm” there is so much open farmlife in there, you’d get to think that Waits has really departed completely from the “nighthawks” of past decades, which have permeated his songs from his folksy-beginnings to the artsy years not so long past. Sure, starting with “Get behind the Mule” and a lot more of the imagery used on “Mule Variations” there has been a lot of farmland-metaphors and country-life-symbols in his songs. But “Mule Variations” was that “classic Tom Waits record”, with the straight blues-rockers and the great ballads (the “grand weepers”). Now he has translated these new influences into his clang and boom comcept first deployed on the aforementioned “Bone Machine”. No more screamed “Going’ Out West”, because he has reached his destination. Now, he’ll “wash the sins of his father” in an epic 11-minute song.[1] No more Sinatra as in “Straight up to the top” but rather Tony Joe White in “Top of the hill”. Plus, there are a lot of axes in this album. Of course, Tom Wait’s vision of the country and farmlife is filled with dark secrets, cruel deeds and fearsome dreams. The lowdown, the broken, the shotgun-shackers and his own monstrous version of the redneck fill his stories – and truly stories they are after all – like the best of William Faulkner’s novels. Strangely the almost industrial noise and deconstructed blues filled with raudy percussions and numbing repetitions fits the scene. Like the handful of songs that are really alcohol-and-methane-stupors (the drug of choice in places where beer and lighter fluid are more easier to come by than cocaine) that always end up in dancing excessively in the mud in the shine of the headlights of your pick-up truck, e.g. “Shake it” or “Metropolitain Glide”. I heard that Waits likes to call them “cubist funk”, but that is just an obvious trail to lead us astray. It is bareknuckled drunken honky-tonk gone barbarian. Loud, straight and easy to bang along to. The kind of muddy blues-excesses that even Captain Beefheart was always afraid of. (Or the time wasn’t ripe for back then…) Ever listened to a shredder fed with thick bows? The fact that Tom Waits has never cared where his influences come from both in time or space, or if they are appropriate to our times and musical standards, or what was expected from him, is what I like most about him. Aside from the music, that is. And there are actually plenty good melodies buried within the clatter and the noise. The record ends on the incredible “Day after tomorrow” which has a fictitious soldier writing home: “"I'm not fighting for justice, I am not fighting for freedom, I am fighting for my life and another day in the world". A political statement to influence the Bush vs Kerry – election? Not really, because the song is so timeless it could have been penned at any time. And that, if nothing else has done already, convinces you that Tom Waits has really left from all the bounds that have chained him to the reality he lived in some years ago. That he is now “real gone”. But hasn’t he with almost every new record? [1] And there is a long tradition of country- and folk-songs ending gruesomely at river banks or in rivers, from “Banks of the Ohio” down to “Where the wild roses grow”.

CD/LP, Anti