Tom Waits
The Mule Variations
(Epitaph)
Ladies and
gentlemen, the drought is over! It has been a
loooongggg six-year wait since Mr. Tom Waits last
blessed us with one of his creaking-croaking,
sweet-sour collections of Tin Pan
Alley-meets-Kerouac-meets-Howlin' Wolf-meets-Satan
standards, and that last one (1993's Bone Machine)
was quite a doozy. So, the big question on his legion
of fans' lips regarding this brand-spanking new album
(and first to be released by his new label, Epitaph) Mule
Variations is, of course, "Was it worth the
wait?"
Some initial
reviews here in the States bemoaned Mule
Variations as just another Tom-by-numbers outing,
saying that it offers nothing new and does not
advance his rather odd oeuvre. To this I say,
"Balderdash!" Though the overall collection
may not reach the heights of Rain Dogs or the
consistency of Bone Machine, it still yields a
fine crop of new material, and contains many of the
most gorgeous ballads he has ever committed to tape.
That is one
of the first things you will notice about the album:
the ballads. "Take It With Me", "House
Where Nobody Lives", "Pony", and
"Georgia Lee" are all masterpieces in their
own right, fusing his penchant for stark piano
backing with his ear for heart-rending melodies and
poetic lyrics. "Georgia Lee" is about as
sad a song as has ever been recorded, and deals with
the true story of a young girl found murdered at the
side of a deserted country road:
"There's
a toad in the witch grass
There's a
crow in the corn
Wild flowers
on a cross by the road
And
somewhere a baby is crying for her mom
As the hills
turn from green back to gold"
The rousing
songs, with their trademark cacophonous junkyard
percussion and blaring guitars are much more fun and
humorous than some of the more sinister offerings in
the same mode on other albums. "Big in
Japan", "Eyeball Kid" and
"Fillipino Box Spring Hog" are all
enjoyable romps with bizarre arrangements and his
patented earthquake of a voice. The high-point, as
far as humor goes, has to be the spoken-word oddity,
"What's He Building?", where the narrator
(a paranoiac denizen of suburbia) prattles on and on
about the secretive goings-on in the garage of his
eccentric neighbor.
The album as
a whole is seeped with more natural imagery than
Waits' usual hyped-up big city
stream-of-consciousness, and this more
"country" feel also suits the arrangements.
The main stand-out guest is legendary harp-player
Charlie Musselwhite, whose mournful blowing is so
spot-on and emotive that it makes one wonder why
Waits hasn't used harmonica before. Mule
Variations is also recorded a LOT more cleanly
than anything since Swordfish Trombones, with
a big, crystalline overall sound that really lets you
hear the beauty of the minimalist playing, without
the sinister tape hiss and purposeful distortion of
Waits' past few outings.
The
proceedings close with what I now have come to
believe is my favorite all-time song by Tom,
"Come On Up to the House", a very spirited,
shouting, gospel number complete with stellar horns
and a huge snare drum sound, which ends things on a
hopeful note. It also contains one of the best
stanzas about not moping around that I have ever
heard:
"All
your cryin don't do no good
Come on up
to the house
Come down
off the cross, cause we can use the wood
Come on up
to the house"
This hopeful
quality is echoed throughout the album, even in its
saddest and most goofy moments, and this new-found
delight in the world sits well with Waits' off-kilter
musical sensibility. Sure, the album isn't perfect,
and we could probably do without "Black Market
Baby" (the closest thing to a Tom-by-numbers
here) or the semi-sappy "Picture in a
Frame", but these are really small gripes.
Overall, this is another wonderful gift from one of
the United States' most individual musical treasures,
and one that will both please his frenzied fans and,
with a little luck, convert a whole bunch more to his
skewed, challenging and ultimately beautiful take on
life.
B.L.
Beth
Orton
Central
Reservation
Some of the
most revered popular musicians of our age, from Louis
Armstrong to Dylan, from the Beatles to Nina Simone,
were amazing synthesizers, first and foremost. That
is, they possessed the insight and musical empathy to
be able to take the living strands of different
musical genres and fuse them together into an
entirely new form. One interesting side note is that
many other musicians have attempted the same
alchemical mixtures in the same time periods as these
legends without attaining any of their transcendent
heights. There's a certain kind of magic needed, I
guess, to pull off such an undertaking.
When Beth
Orton came out with her debut album, Trailer Park,
a couple years ago-- a tuneful lashing together of
sweet folk-rock and electronica-- I was convinced
that she fell squarely in that second camp of
talented also-rans: it was a pretty good album, but
the seams were still showing between the elements a
bit too much for my liking.
I am very
happy to report, though, that with the recent release
of her second full-length, Central Reservation,
that she has jumped up a few hundred rungs on the
ladder of musical magic, to create one of the best
albums of the 90s. Where Trailer Park fell
somewhat short of its promise, Central Reservation
delivers in boat loads.
The new
album manages to be both autumnal and vibrantly
spring-like at the same time, with its beautiful
layers of acoustic guitar, piano, strings, electronic
sounds and percussion. And Orton's expressive voice
echoes this same odd mixture of darkness and
lucidity, with its sleepy warm melodicism and
penchant for breaking at perfect moments.
There are
stylistic nods of all sorts running through the
length of the album: Nick Drake, Portishead,
Everything But The Girl, Rickie Lee Jones (no
slouches in the "synthesizer" category,
themselves!), but Orton makes the overall vibe all
her own in much the same way that Dylan was able to
borrow so heavily from everyone from Martin Carthy to
Chuck Berry to create his most original early work.
The songs
are almost all uniformly gorgeous, well-written and
realized. The opening track (and first single)
"Stolen Car" grabs you by the throat right
from the get-go with its sinister electric slide
guitar (played by the great Ben Harper), super-catchy
melody and that dream voice of hers. And, for the
rest of the album's 45 minutes, it barely lets go.
"Sweetest Decline" (with Dr. John on Piano)
and "Pass in Time" are two of the prettiest
ballads I've heard in years, that drip with a sweet
melancholy that can become addictive after a few
listens.
The use of
electronic elements is much more subtle and
integrated this time out, which actually makes them
more effective and interesting than simply welding a Bryter
Layter guitar line to some beats. Ben Watt of
Everything But The Girl is producer on two of the
tracks ("Stars All Seem To Weep" and the
second, closing version of the title track), and
these are especially effective in their use of more
modern elements.
Conversely,
she sounds just as downright great with only her
voice and guitar on one of the most rocking (!)
songs, "Feel to Believe".
The lyrics
are mostly about longing in all its forms, both
romantic and spiritual, and are infused with feeling,
sweetness and resignation in equal amounts. To be
honest, I listen to her in much the same way that I
listen to Van Morrison-- I don't really pick out the
lyrics as separate from the sound of the music, they
are all part of a perfectly-balanced whole whose main
message is an emotional one.
I highly
recommend this album to anyone with an affinity for
the sad/happy musings of Nick Drake, to those who
like their albums literally soaking in atmosphere, or
to those who may want to check out a baby
legend-in-the-making on her first great flight. My
only regret is that she doesn't have four or five
other albums to listen to yet.
B.L.
