Gil Hates Everything

So you might not know who Tom Waits is: suffice to say he has a voice that makes professional singers wince, but he’s managed to sing with it for forty years without apparent problems, and he has a somewhat eclectic musical output. He’s worked on movie soundtracks and in theatre, most prominently with Robert Wilson and William S. Burroughs on “The Black Rider” (which Canadians should totally see, if it comes to town). This is his album version of the soundtrack to another Wilson play, “Alice”, a story of Lewis Carroll’s relationship with Alice Liddell, the real-life and conspicuously under-age inspiration for the Alice books.

The first thing you’ll notice about Waits’ music is that it’s ineffably grimy, coming from a parallel world where Tin Pan Alley moved to Germany and then annexed the rest of musical culture. There aren’t many other people who sound like this, so it’s worth checking out at least the once just for the experience.

The second thing you’ll notice is that Waits only has two kinds of song, and one of them gets musically old real fast… it’s a grinding ballad form, where the key is largo and the balladeer is lazily pointing a gun at you while he finishes his six identical-sounding verses. In those songs, all you can really do is pay attention to the lyrics, because you’ve heard this song before, and the further into the album you get the more you’ll have heard it. Fortunately, his other kind of song is a crazily inventive thing which will go all sorts of strange places you weren’t expecting, so at least there’s some musical interest as well as intellectual satisfaction (plus the aforementioned gritting-of-teeth at how the fuck this guy still has a throat).

Waits’ lyrics are poetic but elliptical, so while they were a fascinating listen, I’m not exactly clear on the plot they’re based within. But then I’ve seen “The Black Rider” and I would have to say I wasn’t overly clear on that plot either. But it didn’t matter, there was a lot to think about and a lot to admire in the physical process of the play, and I can’t see that this would be any different. Waits’ edition of the “Black Rider” album is a bit different from the play’s soundtrack, and it might be the same here, but I’d still be entirely willing to go see this show, just on the basis that people this bright are unlikely to make something overly boring.

I can’t honestly recommend this album to the casual listener, but GHM readers are special, with above-average intelligence and a broad tolerance for the unusual and the avant-garde, so Random Panda awards “Tom Waits’ Alice” seven out of ten pieces of bamboo, with the advice that this is what libraries are for.

(originally published 2010)