For Tom Waits fans, 1999's Mule Variations was the first studio peep the gravel-voice musician had chirped in a long time. Despite a tour, critical acclaim and fair record sales, initial suspicions pointed to Waits spending more time with family and less time involved with making music. In a way, I suppose that is still the case, because although he has released two new recordings in 2002, nevertheless both are the brainchilds of previous collaborations with his wife Kathleen Brennan: the songs for Blood Money were written for a stage version of Georg Buchner's Woyzeck in 2000, and the songs for Alice were composed in 1992 for a stage version of the same name, written by Robert Wilson and based on the life of Wonderland author Lewis Carroll. Both may be influenced by the plays for which they were written, but luckily they stand alone as accessible works, even if you're not familiar with the source material.
Alice is pretty much what we've come to expect from Waits and co-writer Kathleen: a little bit of everything. Among some of the instruments present are the violin, cello, pump organ, bass, piano, mellotron, marimba, clarinet, saxophone, trumpet, vibes, and former Police-man Stewart Copeland even stops by to play drums. On a track such as "Table Top Joe", Waits brings ragtime into his oft-macabre style, muttering "On the day I was born / I was born without a body". The opener "Alice" is a welcome return to soft jazz ballad turf, and the manic "Kommienezuspadt" mixes blues undertones with mock, cacophonic German cries.
Some of the songs have familiar rings. The marble-mouthed baritone pace of "Everything You Can Think" is reminiscent of Waits's Swordfishtrombones material, and "Reeperbahn" and "Poor Edward" call to mind the apocalyptically dark subject matter of 1992's Bone Machine. And of course there are the soft ones, such as "I'm Still Here", the instrumental "Fawn", and the simple but powerful "Flower's Grave", easily among the best on this diverse record.
I have to confess, I already had a dubbed copy of Alice. It had been circulating underground on the Tom Waits e-mailing list for about three or four years now, and those of us who had snatched up a copy of it have remained quiet because we weren't entirely sure of the legalities or where it originally came from. A cassette isn't the same as owning the CD, which I eventually bought when it did come out, therefore I probably have little to worry about. So, who knows if Tom Waits is working on new stuff. The main thing is, he's also released the other material as well, in the form of the CD Blood Money. There's lots of Waits to listen to this year. Oh my!
