647 Tom Waits - Frank's Wild Years (1987)

Studio Album - Avant Americana

About the Act:

Tom Waits is an American Blues/Jazz/Experimental singer/songwriter/musician. 

He started out as Jazz and morphed into more blues/folk with some decided "experimental" elements. He has created a kind of hobo/beat poet persona. He has been incredibly successful worldwide. He has also worked as an actor. Since his first album in 1973, he has had 16 more.

About the Album:

This was his tenth studio album, and contains songs written for a play of the same name. Maybe the play made some kind of sense.

My History with this Album:

None

Review:

At first I was like "Yeah, another Tom Wait's album. I'll enjoy this". By the middle I was like "wow, he's really piling on the bonkers this time". By the end I was like "what? Are we not finished yet? More of this?"

That might tell you a lot. It might not.

So I have enjoying getting to know Tom Waits and his music. I have discovered that he has quite an unusual approach to his music, and I know that he got more "experimental" over time. Let's attempt to describe what's going on.

The music, the actual songs, are musically quite straightforward really, and fit in this sort of broad Americana space, between Jazz (including some very Frank Sinatra stuff), Blues, Country (but not very) and "Old Timey" - like American Hymn, folk, Bluegrass an waltzes and so on, oh and on this album a particular flavour of Creole music, like New Orleans and Zydeco, and using an accordion.  This description really doesn't paint the full picture, though.

The songs come from the darkness of Tom Wait's version of America, like Jack Kerouac Noir, neon lights on motels, smoky dive casinos and knife fights in the car park, all in the dark, of course. Actually, most of this is gathered from scattered lyrics, which are picked out from the rest of the lyrics which are largely indecipherable due to the delivery. I'll come to this.

One particular favourite pair of lines (for me) is "Never trust a man in a blue trench coat, never drive a car when you're dead". I'm convinced that most of it is intended to be phrases and words to set a sort of scene. There could be narrative in there, though, I couldn't tell.

So the vocal delivery. Tom can sing without extreme gravel to his voice, grunting and growling, but he choses not to do so often. About the most strongly affected gravel I have come across, and different on each track, sometimes very tonally compressed like he is singing though a bullhorn, or down the telephone. Even this is not where the album is extreme, that comes in the arrangements.

Nothing seems to be off-limit when it comes to the sounds used, generally there is a acoustic bass, after that there may be chords, possibly a guitar, but more likely a stuttering organ, a discordant guitar line, an odd percussion, and some sound effects. Not all in the right key, sometime deliberately so. Let's have an example:

I'll be gone starts with a cockerel crowing. The music seems to be a very percussive accordion and a marimba, with an electric guitar twanging random notes, the occasional blast on a trombone, and metallic crashing noises like somebody dropping a dustbin lid. Tom sings as if he is straining to do so, in a style reminiscent of a dying Russian Gangster. One section of words (the best I can make them out)

"Tonight I'll shave the mountain

I'll cut the hearts of pharaohs

I'll pull the root up from the ice,

Tear the memories from my eyes

And in the morning I'll be gone"

The end effect is grotesque, like an Avant Garde play depicting the downfall of the Marquis de Sade, or a Peter Greenaway film. I think I feel like this time he has pushed the bonkers a notch too far, almost as if he is testing the limits of what he can get away with. The real problem is that it is relentless. 

So, unfortunately, this Tom Waits album - not my favourite.

6/10

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/album/2zIaHUyMLCtg7pxtp1ZpO7

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLTMN6OMDTnKkHKH6wWJKtW6D_SJ5hTn4x

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franks_Wild_Years