3 keepers
keeper avg .200
On his follow-up to the acclaimed "Blood Money" and "Alice" from 2002 Waits delivers his usual assortment of genre studies, including torch songs ("Green Grass"), Irish drinking songs (the atypically political "Day After Tomorrow"), muted cabaret ("How's It Gonna End" and the murder ballad "Dead and Lovely"), a menacing rockabilly ("Hoist That Rag"****) and blues ("Shake It", "Make It Rain", and "Baby Gonna Leave Me). While "Make it Rain" is relatively conventional, "Shake It" is transitioned to the slower passages by a distorted, inhuman scream, and "Baby Gonna Leave Me"**** is filled with noisy percussion, including curious distorted, clanking "belches." "Don't Go into That Barn"**** is rendered as a demonic work song, driven by guttural grunts and including this unsettling dialog suggesting a heinous crime: "Did you bury your fire? Yes sir! Did you cover your tracks? Yes sir! Did you bring your knife? Yes sir! Did they see your face? No sir!" Of course the more raucous songs are usually delivered in Waits's typical Captain Beefheart-inspired demented wino persona.
Unfortunately "Real Gone" misses the mark almost as often as it hits. Opening track "Top of the Hill" is a mess, with any grunted words buried in noise. The dreary 10-minutes plus of "Sins of My Father" is about 8 too many, and the aforementioned "Day After Tomorrow" is far too long. The cabaret-inspired "How's It Gonna End" seems stretched-out and less profound than it's meant to be and the high chants that punctuate all the verses of the somber "Trampled Rose" get old after a dozen of them. And out of the many spoken-word tracks I've heard by Waits, "Circus" is the most disappointing; while they're usually flavored with gallows humor or deliciously unsettling, somehow he manages to make circus carnies sound boring.
Comments