Tom Waits - 'Real Gone' (Anti / Epitaph)
5/5
By: Toby L
We were a bit lucky on this one. rockfeedback muscled its way into a playback of Waits' 'Real Gone' some months back, and only now has its genius been granted a public blaring. We've been in love ever since.
For Tom Waits is on 'f**k it' mode this time, boys and girls. Why else is he doing a first UK show in 17 years? And left his much-beloved piano off every one of the fifteen tracks herein (or sixteen, if you count the compelling, bow-out secret tune)? Both such notions are virtually unheard of.
And it's because there's cause for celebration. In a two-year saturation where the nu blues has dominated, Waits - the earnest, ragged-voiced, husky dawg himself - is back to cast some serious bluez on your ass and make us all recall just what the master is capable of. Few can pertain their time as invaluably and timelessly, wrestling with genres and contorting expectations until the listener emerges a pensive wreck. The words, the soul, the outright human display - 'Real Gone' is 2004 as much as it's 1954, or any other aeon.
'Make It Rain' - a sultry, organ-humping, woozy classic; 'The Day After Tomorrow' - a politically charged platter of despair and question; 'Sins Of The Father' - a protracted, acousto-folk flourishing; 'How's It Gonna End' - a sleekly macabre, lo-fi waltz; 'Top Of The Hill' - a distressingly boogie-friendly series of human beatboxing and turntable abrasion; 'Dead & Lovely' - well, just you guess.
Interspersed with typically intriguing, mini-'ludes - 'Clang Boom Steam'; or the downbeat, more minimalist furls of 'Green Grass' - Waits has provided a deeply character-driven opus which seldom drags. Can't say that's a shock now, can we. Hail: the continued, illustrious purveyor of all that's well, good and vital in sound.
Artists in this article: Tom Waits
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