Aural Fixations

TOM WAITS
Real Gone
(Anti-)
Tom Waits has become like Richard Thompson; it's so common for him to release a brilliant piece of work that it's almost a non-event. Waits puts out new album. It's hailed by critics and fans as a jewel. Rinse. Repeat. Real Gone is no exception. Like his 1999 comeback Mule Variations, Real Gone is, at heart, a blues record. The ghosts of Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters haunt these grooves, in both spirit and form. That's not to say that Waits is on some blues revivalist trip here—it's more like he's filtering Chicago and country blues through his own utterly unique sensibilities. Using an unusual mix of supporting musicians (jazz guitarist Marc Ribot, Primus' Brain and Les Claypool, stalwart bassist/guitarist Larry Taylor, former hair metal guitarist Harry Cody), Waits plays the blues as abstract art, reiterating its status as the ultimate form of musical personal expression. Partly it's because of the unconventional percussion Waits and company employ. Often the tracks eschew a drum kit for found objects; Waits' son Casey adds turntable scratching and sampled beats to the mix as well, though not in a way that could necessarily be construed as hip-hop. Waits himself often loops his own mouth-produced noises under the tracks as well; the final cut "Clang Boom" is nothing but vocally generated sounds. Combine these unconventional arrangements with Waits' harsh singing and the usual coterie of misfits, loser, criminals and drunks that inhabit his songs, and you've got a blues program like no other. Tunes like "Top of the Hill" and "Shake It" sound like Howlin' Wolf as interpreted by an impressionist painter, keeping the blues groove while deconstructing everything else. "You know I feel like a preacher waving a gun around," he declares on "Shake It," which explains everything. "Baby Gonna Leave Me," "Hoist That Rag" and "Don't Go Into the Barn" do indeed rant and rave like demented pastors, a highball in one hand and a cross in the other, and you don't want to know what the stains are. In this context, sedate but still unhinged tunes like "Dead and Lovely" and "Make It Rain" come across as a relief. Only "Day After Tomorrow" strips away the madness for a tender ballad, letting some fresh air into the musty shack. Like the best of Waits' work, Real Gone isn't an easy listen—for longtime fans, the closest point of reference is probably Waits' Grammy-winning but wacked-out masterpiece Bone Machine. Real Gone is a difficult journey, but an immensely rewarding one for anybody willing to get a little dirty along the way. Michael Toland [buy it]