| Tom Waits- Bad As Me |
| Written by Derek Harrison | |||
| Thursday, 08 December 2011 11:58 | |||
 Top track: "Face to the Highway" Bottom track: "Get Lost"
Tom Waits is a legend. He rivals Bob Dylan as having the most imitated singing voice, as well as being one of the most important and singular living songwriters. Like Bob Dylan, Waits is continually rediscovered by every new generation on the scene, and it's more than likely that Waits is the one that holds more sway, excitement, and influence in contemporary music. On his new album, Bad As Me, Waits does what he does best. Drawing influence primarily from his own back catalogue, Waits displays his songsmanship pure and simple without changing his unique, tried-and-true recipes for arrangement and with, possibly, an even better set of vocal performances than his standard fare. The title track and leading single sees Waits cutting loose even by his own standards, with the stand-up performance of the album; "They tell my you're no good, but I know you take care of all my needs. You're the same kind of bad as me." The album is more or less evenly split between the rockers like the title track and the ballads which can be counted among some of the best of Waits' career. The horn-laden B-minor groove of opening track "Chicago" is pure Tom Waits, delivering up his classic storytelling and intense performance without a single chord change, the singer himself plucking a banjo and singing "Maybe things will be better in Chicago." This short introductory track promises a lot, and Bad As Me delivers. Waits' cries "All aboard!" at the close of the song and the first stop on the trip is "Raised Right Men," which sounds like a pun on Nick Cave's "Red Right Hand," but other than the turn of phrase the song is own beast, with horror-movie vox organ, Flea on the bass, and Waits on the tabla. The horn section returns on "Talking at the Same Time," featuring a left-field performance from Waits, a dead-on falsetto which is almost unrecognizable but is sweet, smoky, and beautiful, fitting perfectly with his already-very-1920s music. "Get Lost" is a quick rockabilly romp and as such doesn't have so much to offer. Throughout the album Waits manages to draw from most every part of his long career as a recording artist, so naturally there are bound to be moments that we could do without. On the other hand, with this song Waits manages to prove that he remains at the peak of his form as a performer. "Face to the Highway," the first of a trio of consecutive ballads, is an immediate classic. It draws on Waits' signature sounds only subtly, in case we needed any more evidence that he hadn't become a caricature of himself and that he remains first and foremost a songwriter; "I'll turn my face to the highway/I'll turn my back on you." For the waltz, "Pay Me," Waits takes on his lounge-jazz voice. The European sound of the accordion and strings harken to his theatrical background as well as his world-weary singer persona. His low, gruff voice returns for the Spanish-tinged "Back in the Crowd," an acoustic-guitar heavy track which captures Waits' sweet, wistful side but is a little too predictable and sentimental to be a standout. The back half of the album alternates between rockers – "Bad As Me," "Satisfied," "Hell Broke Luce" – and ballads – "Kiss Me," "Last Leaf," "New Year's Eve." For "Satisfied" Waits takes a little of the James Brown spirit, backing vocals included, and once again delivers up a dead-on vocal performance and another of his most memorable lines: "Let the bullet go back into the barrel." "Hell Broke Luce" is reminiscent of Waits' experiments with words and sounds on Bawlers Brawlers and Bastards. The critical military lyrics and the heavy, dense soundscape rock combine to make this one of the most fun and engaging cuts on Bad As Me. The first of the ballads on the back half is "Kiss Me," a lounge jazz tune featuring piano, stand-up bass, and electric guitar backing up Waits' smoky voice, running through the crackling of a dusty record player, with an intimacy reminiscent of Nighthawks At The Diner. The next, "Last Leaf," is folk song featuring backing vocals from follow legend Keith Richards. The autobiographical song bleeds emotion: "They say I've got staying power, out here on the tree, but I've been here since Eisenhower and I outlived even he." The closing track "New Years Eve" is another moment of brilliance. Combining American and European folk music, the song is loosely based on "Auld Lang Syne" and features a wearier-than-the-world performance from Waits. Picking up more or less where "Last Leaf" left off and finishing the album on a high note, it's a challenger for one of Waits' best closing tracks in his catalogue. The man is not a legend, for his brilliance is not yet a thing of the past. Track Listing 1. "Chicago" 2:15 For more articles like Tom Waits- Bad As Me, please visit the Music/Album Reviews Sectionof TimesSquare.com
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