As always with the varying degrees of creepiness/weirdness, there are many songs that sound conventional by comparison. "Lie To Me" pretty much establishes this tone: bluesy progression, bluesy solo, a little bit of delay for an otherworldly feel, but in the end a blues song. Same with "Lowdown", nothing interesting but distorted vocals. "2:19" has more of the psychedelic jug band sound we expect, and "Fish In The Jailhouse"**** finally has the trademark funny, creepy lyrics that tie it all together. Even without being especially weird like the best middle albums, even Tom going through the motions is not bad, as the weird vocal noises in "Lucinda" don't save an otherwise uninspired tune. Some may like to listen to Tom sing the newspaper, and on that's exactly what we get on "Road To Peace", a journalistic recitation of Middle East wars; with the what sounds like a sincere delivery it totally stinks up the middle of the album. "Sea Of Love"**** on the other hand manages to take a syrupy classic and turns it into a walk through the haunted house with the altered melody and understated instrumentation. "Buzz Fledderjohn"**** is also relatively subtle, presenting Tom's creepy hermit-blues-guy persona in the best light. "Rains On Me" is an appropriately chipper lament for the disc's closer, though the campiness makes it annoying after a few listens.
Disc 2 (Bawlers) - keepers - 6
Rather than the more typical Tom Waits experience of the ether-ed trip through the funhouse, disc 2 is more of a wine-driven bar hop, a world tour of ballad styles. The more emotive "Bend Down The Branches" and "You can Never Hold Back Spring" set up "Long Way Home" as a mellow stroll to "Widow's Grove"**** at the Parisian cafe. While all of these are light and airy, it is only a matter of time before the tour guide takes a detour to the psychedelic tango "Little Drop of Poison"****. Though there are exceptions, most of the disc is dominated by piano ballads and torch songs, "Never Let Go" and "Down There By The Train" of the overwrought variety, with occasional acoustic guitar meditations, including "Tell It To Me" and the understated cautionary tale "Fannin Street"****. Set in Tom's favorite piano ballad venue, the jazzy "It's Over"**** is heavy on the brushes, but also the trademark down-and-out lines: "I must've brought the bad weather with me" and "I always confess to everyone's sins". One of the exceptions to the piano ballad default is the hilariously joyful drunken singalong "Goodnight Irene"**** ("Everybody!"). "Take Care Of All My Children" is another oddball, with heavy religious implications and backed by full street mission band. Other ballads such as "If I Have To Go" and "The Fall Of Troy" are more classically influenced and in this setting almost whimsical. Though deliberately retro and lo-fi, the pedal steel makes the closing cover of "Young At Heart"**** pleasantly tropical and dreamy.
Disc 3 (Bastards) - keepers - 3
Opener "What Keeps Mankind Alive" is Waits' uninspired attempt at creep cabaret, while "Two Sisters"**** is a charming and stripped-down homage to the traditional murder ballad (it's much different from Clannad's version, which I was not previously aware of). Of course Waits' deformed blues are covered, as in "Books Of Moses", "Bone Chain", and "On The Road". The best stretch occupies the end of the album's first half. "Two Sisters" leads into "First Kiss"****, a drawling recollection of the narrator's ridiculously earthy but impressive first love. I have no idea what "Dog Door"**** is about: "She got me coming through the dog door, Pitchfork, Crowbar, Clawhammer, hot tar", but it sounds pretty menacing. The second half settles into a bit of a rut with three loungy and generic torch songs, "Home I'll Never Be", "Poor Little Lamb", and "Altar Boy", with this silliness "That's why I'm so depressed, I never got the rest of the dream, Just the ritual, Now I'm habitual". Chanting over blues riffs and voice box percussion in "King Kong" is interesting except for the run-on sentence lyric resembling a 5 year old narrating "And then a hero
Came and took his woman, And they fell off the mountain Into some water", sounds phoned in to me. "Pontiac" is an amusing monologue, but not up to even Waits' average, and descending to stand-up, "Dog Treat", where a sophisticated live audience chuckles about a cow's private parts for 3-minutes, and moldy joke "Missing My Son", to end the album. These clunkers and the smugly ironic fractured tale "Children's Story" are the toss-offs of an writer who has reduce his art to a tired character.
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