:: Tom Waits – Real Gone

Tom Waits

Tom Waits has stated for some time that, even when he was young, he wanted to be old – but it is now obvious just what era he wanted to belong to. The deliberately faded insert cover of Waits gives a hint, but the sound of the album itself in many places (most notably “Top of the hill”, “Hoist that Rag” “Shake It” “Don’t Go Into That Barn” and “Boom Clang Steam”) possesses the sound of a steam locomotive, and there are a number of mentions of trains throughout the album.

Since his last releases back in 2002, Waits has obviously been concerned with the way his country is going. Even leaving the lyrical content aside, following a track named ‘hoist that rag’ (Flag) with ‘sins of the father’ makes his position pretty clear.

When it comes right down to it, this is a Tom Waits record, and it sounds like it. Waits doesn’t sound like anyone else, and his tales of misfortune and strange characters from the underclass told with his ancient whisky-soaked voice are not exactly surprising or unexpected for anyone who has perused his back catalogue. Real Gone does not contain any astounding revelations about the nature of Tom Waits. In some ways, it seems like more of the same. If you already like his stuff, Real Gone is worth a listen. If you don’t, its probably not.

This is not to say that Real Gone is just Waits by the numbers. There is some interesting material here. “Circus” sounds almost as though he is channelling both the eerie sound of Angelo Badalamenti’s work on the soundtrack to Twin Peaks and the true strangeness of David Lynch’s characters in the same series. The lyrical content, if not the sound, of “Dead and lovely” is reminiscent of Murder Ballads era Nick Cave.

The anti-Bush/neocon angle so common in US music these days is present here, but considerably more subtle than in the work of many artists. It is particularly notable in the album's finest track, which is a perfect example that a effective political point can sometimes be better made through a quiet personal tale than through a barrage of obscenities and screams of outrage delivered Rage Against The Machine style. Said track, “Day after Tomorrow”, is written in the form of a letter from a young soldier about to return home to his family after being deployed overseas. This track alone makes the album a worthwhile listen.