Tom Waits - Bad As Me

When Tom is good he’s very very good, but when he’s Bad As Me he’s better.

There are no bad Tom Waits albums, just albums that aren’t as good as his other stuff. In a career spanning close to forty years, he is definitely allowed a few missteps (Foreign Affairs and Glitter and Doom live I'm looking at you) and this, thankfully is not one of them. It has been quite a while since his mostly good and compelling three disc (!) odds and ends collection Orphans - Brawlers, Bawlers and Bastards, and even longer since his last studio album proper, 2004’s Real Gone. Stopgap live release Glitter and Doom showed his voice shot, and middle aged singer-songwriter “give the sessioneers some” muso excesses creeping in, so it was with some trepidation I first listened to the title track.

At this point, I realised that this was going to be very good indeed - the trademark piano, out of action on Real Gone, was back, along with the ominous horns of the his mid 80s - early 90s work and Marc Ribot’s prosphetic Cuban heeled guitar welded to the percussive clangbooomsteam he’s used as his main mode of expression since Swordfishtrombones. Most reassuringly, he is on fine vocal form, an edge of hysteria creeping into the yowled litany of things that make Tom realise his muse is as brilliantly dysfunctional as he is, and loving every second of it. Most strikingly of all, it sounded like it could’ve fitted on Bone Machine, definitely no bad thing (it is one of the best albums bar none after all) but an unusual one in a career based on moving forwards and never looking back. Here is one of the many things that makes Tom Waits great - where many people after a certain age base their career on retreading and reappraising the past, it seems like a bold move when he does it.

This is one of the things that makes this not only one of his best, but one of the ideal starting points for a new fan of all things Waits. In the past there was a sense that he was ashamed of his Bukowski barfly period, before the transformation courtesy of wife, muse and collaborator Kathleen Brennan. At times on this album, however, that period is referenced. Raised Right Men could fit pretty snugly on Heartattack and Vine, all blues groove and Howlin Wolf growl - til you notice the screeching Vox organ stabs and insistent tabla woven around the edges. Kiss Me, vinyl crackle and all, could fit very well on Blue Valentines - there’s a definite resemblance to the title track and his voice sounds eerily similar to the way it did then. Penultimate track New Year’s Eve even throws back to Tom Traubert’s Blues in its tear sodden incorporation of the refrain to a standard, this time Auld Lang Syne not Waltzing Matilda.

Most startling in this vein are the two tracks that most prominently feature Keith Richards. Last Leaf features Richards on guitar and backing vocals, a throwback to Bone Machine’s That Feel, but musically this time it could fit on Closing Time. Which actually makes the song all the more moving - on Closing Time, an old before his time Waits sang Martha from the point of view of an old man ringing a childhood sweetheart. Now, at 61, a happily married Waits sings of being the last leaf on the tree on an album where he laughs in the face of his mortality - most explicitly on Satisfied where ith the fire of a man a third of his age, Waits barks “I will get my satisfaction….I will be satisfied” as Keith Richards (given a shout out in the line “Mr Jagger and Mr Richards”) plays in the background. You don’t, for a second, doubt that he will get what he wants.

The energy of a lot of this album puts a lot of people a third of Mr Waits age to shame. It’s not just looking back at the past and laughing at the shadow of the reaper. On Get Lost, he dives into rockabilly in a way he’s never really done before and its a revelation - its as if they held a seance and the spirit of dear departed Lux Interior used ol Tom as a vessel. On Talking At The Same Time he unleashes a Billie Holiday falsetto startling in its purity - previous forays into falsetto had a scratchiness that made them unnerving (see his version of Cole Porters It's Alright With Me where he sounds like a dying Jamaican woman.

Talking At The Same Time one of many songs that could fit on the soundtrack to a David Lynch film and surely they’re aware of each other by this point in time - the coda to Pay Me is pure Twin Peaks, Frank's Wild Years Yesterday Is Here if he'd been listening to Badalamenti not Morricone. Hell Broke Luce sees him barking from the point of view of a traumatised veteran over clattering percussion and guitar riffing bordering at times on avant-metal. Since Real Gone (and arguably before) his political writing has been more explicit, but never as angry as this.

The opening track, though is what really crystallises Waits brilliance - Howlin Wolf meets Bertolt Brecht, a mind and body in the gutter with the fervour of the pulpit as Marc Ribot and Keith Richards guitars do a knife fight dance around each other, the Living Riff and guitarist in the worlds second best Rolling Stones tribute act trading licks with A Plastic Cuban and John Zorn sideman - the avante garde and the mainstream going hand in hand with no meaningful distinction, just how it should be. And his son on drums.

So, yes, this is up there with his best - slotting into my top 5 between Frank’s Wild Years and Rain Dogs (but below Bone Machine and Alice in case you’re interested). It is also the ideal start point for the reason that you get every flavour of Waits here for less of a price tag than the three disc Orphans. However, there’s no turning back from this point. You either love Waits, or you hate him. I know which camp I fall into.