HOT Musical Review

[Kiyoodle the Gambrinous]

I finally got my hands on the newest Tom Waits album "Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers and Bastards", and after listening to it, I have decided to share my feelings about this great record with the rest of you. As we don't have a separate place for musical reviews, I opened this thread, and everyone is allowed to post their thoughts on new and old musical releases. So here is a little review I've put together:

Tom Waits - Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers and Bastards

First of all, I'd like to say a few words on Tom Waits, for those who don't know who this guy is.

Tom Alan Waits is an American singer-songwriter, composer and (occasionally) an actor. The first thing people notice is his very distinctive voice. This was best described by a critic, who said that Waits' voice is "...like it was soaked in a vat of bourbon, left hanging in the smokehouse for a few months and then taken outside and run over with a car", which in my opinion says it all.
His music can't really be put into the existing music styles; he incorporates in his musc mostly pre-rock styled music, like blues and jazz, occasionally experimenting even with industrial music. His songs are mostly about atmospheric portrayals of bizarre, seedy characters and places, as well as touching ballads.

Now after this brief introduction, I shall continue with the album.

First of all, "Orphans" is a three disc limited edition, containing mostly rare and unreleased tracks and 30 brand new songs. Each disc is intended to be a separate collection in itself, each disc has its own subtitle.

The first one, called "Brawlers", contains mostly raucous, grungy blues, raggedy boogies, whiskery shuffles and barroom stomps delivered in Waits' distinctive manner - a delirious, rowdy sound, singing about themes like travel, regret, murder, salvation.

The second, "Bawlers", could also be found as the most accessible disc in the collection. This disc contains Celtic and country ballads, waltzes, lullabies, piano and classic lyrical Waits' songs; it's a twenty-song collection of poison-sweet ballads and damaged folk. Yes, the lyrics appear stereotyped, but with the author's eye for detail ("a feather on an unmade bed") and his hallucinatory phrasing bring it to a whole new level.

The third disc, "Bastards", is the most deformed of the three, filled with experimental tunes and strange tales; a mess of word interludes, cruel jokes and sonic experiments. Some of the stuff on this CD is odd and obscure even for Waits; we have for example a lecture on the macabre habits of insects that closes with a homework assignment straight out of a B-grade horror ("Army Ants"). This disc is a crazy mix: unruly, uneven, and full of feints and free-for-alls.

Ultimately the center of "Orphans" is Waits' voice. On these three discs, he shows the range of its possibilities, its nuances, its expressions, from barks to midnight whispers. It's those expressions that carry Waits' songs and monologues to the listener inviting him into a different world, a world of barrooms, twisted individuals and cruel stories. And it is that voice that links all three of these discs together and makes them one.
"Orphans" is a major work that goes beyond all borders and creates something utterly new, beyond anything he has previously issued.


PS: this got a little longer than I originally intended, hopefully it's as interesting as I was aiming for.

[Aggie]

Put it on hold at the library.  I really like some of his stuff from Bone Machine, but haven't been able to get my hands on it.

BTW, beautiful review Kiyo... it would have inspired me to pick up this album even if I'd never heard Mr. Waits.

[Kiyoodle the Gambrinous]

BTW, beautiful review Kiyo... it would have inspired me to pick up this album even if I'd never heard Mr. Waits.

Thanks. I'm glad you like the review, I've really put a lot of thoughts in it.

Guess it's the album that inspired me so much. I just listened to the whole thing in one session and just had the urge to write something about it. When I was done, I was pretty shocked how much I've written down.

And if you like Waits, you'll definitely like this thing.

[Sibling Chatty]

Waits was one of my favorite live shows ever.

I had to sneak out of the hospital to see him, and I was doped up to the max, but it was wonderful.

(I'd just donated bone marrow, back in the chisel and hammer removal method days.)

[Aggie]

I was doped up to the max, but it was wonderful.

I'm sure you weren't the only one.

[Kiyoodle the Gambrinous]

The Good, the Bad and the Queen by The Good, the Bad and the Queen

Damon Albarn is at it again. After achieving stardom in the Nineties with Blur and later great success with Gorillaz, he comes with his new band, the Good, the Bad and the Queen. The name of the band, as awkward as it might sound, implies a certain degree of fun to be had. But what we get is a moody and often dreary outfit. But that doesn't mean we don't get a good record. On the contrary.

The group is an odd mix, to say the least - Clash bassist Paul Simonon, Verve guitarist Simon Tong and Africa 70 drummer Tony Allen, plus the production of Danger Mouse. The result is a dark muted balladry, a little like Syd Barrett or the Beatles' White Album, with a touch of dub.

For all it's strange beauty, this is very much Albarn's record. The other musicians are great, but they don't show thei full potential and stay in the shadow of Albarn's brilliance. Simon Tong's guitar is tastefully atmospheric, but ultimately anonymous; Tony Allen's drums often sound more like the work of a machine; Simonon's clunk may have been placed deliberately high in the mix by Danger, but even at its most magically intrusive it fails to divert attention from Albarn.

The Good, the Bad and the Queen is a great record, very emotional and musically sophisticated. It's only a shame that Albarn didn't give more space to the other members of the group to show their full potential, but play a mere part however with Albarn in full control. Worth every penny though.

[Kiyoodle the Gambrinous]

Grinderman - Grinderman

The Australian musician Nick Cave will be fifty years old in Autumn. At this age, many men try to "improve" their life, try something new, catch a new lease on life, which in many cases manifests itself as a grotesque attempt to prove to oneself and the others that it is still not late to devise a new and better life. The sound of Nick Cave's new album - or more precisely the debut of his new band Grinderman - and the way this album has been created, fulfills the characteristics of such rebellion against the sterotypes of one's own existence. The author frees himself from some of the attributes that creates Nick Cave in the eyes of the public. Instead of a large supporting group The Bad Seeds, Grinderman is formed only by three people (and Cave): Jim Scalvunos (drums), Martyn Casey (bass)and Warren Ellis (everything possible). The line-up also shows one very important absence - the quitarist Mick Harvey, who was inseparable with Cave since high school. It is true that all the group members are at the same time members of The Bad Seeds, but the new band sounds simpler, more impulsive, less disciplined.

During interviews in the past few years Nick Cave has often described his life style as the one of a settled author, who goes to his office at nine and stay there till five and restrainedly creating. The sound and the lyrics of the new album are the opposite of that - according to Cave, everything has been created while palying together in the studio. Likewise important is the change of the orchestration. Piano and fiddlesticks don't take place in the majority of the songs, which releases Cave and his songs from the pigeon-hole of dark romantism, wild and a little dirty, but still elegant and beautiful.
Already the album cover shows somehow an antithesis of the romantic picture of the cursed poet, as which Cave has often been represented. The new songs of the author of epic compositions about obsessed, even murdering, but always soulful heroes, come in a box with the picture of a masturbating baboon on top. No trail of soul, only blunt, urgent and mechanical body function. The inner side of the cover can shock the fan of this "old" Nick Cave - the classic of rock decadence has grown a moustache. The rest of the band keeps pace with him, and they all look together like a fraction of Mansons gang lost in time. Underneath his moustache, Nick Cave seems like he's provocatively grinning at his fans and himself, at the institution that he has become during years.

In a way, the change of Cave's physics reflects the advancement in his music. The songs of The Bad Seeds have always been very masculine, it was a "man thing". On Grinderman, Nick Cave has adopted slightly neanderthaler-like rock-and-roll  manhood - big beards and screaming electric guitar. He's making a little fun of it, but it's obviously not all about fun.
Already the song titles seem soaked in testosteron - No Pussy Blues, Depth Charge Ethyl, When My Love Comes Down, Love Bomb... The sound of the album corresponds to this - the spreading, but still gripping sound of The Bad Seeds has been replaced by linear noise, drawn by an excited guitar, which sometimes sounds like Nick Cave is playing it with an axe.
The Grinderman songs are not carried by the ambition to prove to himself and the world that the band members can kick it like in youth. It's the music of people, who know that one's "youth" won't repeat itself. It's the sound of heaviness of aging sometimes caught with a considerable amount of sarcasm. The song No Pussy Blues for example - this songs rush forward with the energy and unstopability of a wild rhinoceros, but in the text Cave describes with a grin the troubles of an aging rock star, which can't get it on with a beautiful girl in the audience, no matter what the artist tries. In the song Go Tell the Women Cave openly elocutes: "But we are tired, We're hardly breathing, And we're free, Go tell the women that we're leaving". It's not an uprising, but not an old man's resignation either, thank to the band's music.

The roughness of the music does not have the mask of youthfulness, it's more the continuation of ancient tradition going down to old bluesmen. It is also a rougness that is more endurring, because it's not anchored in foolishness of any age group. Grinderman is neither contemporary, nor anachronistic. They're not pretending to be the creators of the music, they're playing. But their music is specific, thanks to inglorious sound oddities, which are brought in by the multiinstrumentalis Warren Ellis, the rough and at the same time colourful rhytmics of Casey and Scalavunos and especially thanks to the frontman.
People do not change much at the reaching of the age of fifty, neither does Cave. He may have changed his "modus operandi" for Grinderman, but he has reached to songs like Nick Cave's, balancing at the border between passion and sarcasm, oscillating in between spewing flow of verbal aggression (Get It On)and silent and sad memory (Man in the Moon). Out of the eleven tracks on this album, almost all are good, some of the are very good and a few are brilliant. It's not the novelty that is the most important on this album. The novelty only allows to transcend the things that are known of Cave for a long time, but were pestled in the last few years by the sterotype of a successful artist, repeating his - undoubtedly beautiful - number. It's like Nick Cave had to release himself from all the possible attributes of this "caveness" to show, why he is so strong. It's not image, it's not style, but the sound in all the meanings of this word.

[Aggie]

Just got Orphans in from the library.

[Kiyoodle the Gambrinous]

Congrats!!!

I hoe you enjoy it as much as I did!

[Aggie]

I'll need to get out in the field to give it a proper listen (long solo drives are my only real music refuge anymore).

[Kiyoodle the Gambrinous]

I don't know if that's the best way to listen to it.

I recommend a quite afternoon, a bottle of scotch and a nice Cuban cigar.

[Aggie]

Alberta driving is boring, flat and straight.  So music is the best way to keep your higher brain active so you don't go to sleep, and listening Tom Waits is a decent mental workout.  I could easily go through all 3 CDs between stops.

Quiet afternoons, I don't have (at least not on my own, and Christie's not a Tom Waits fan).

[Kiyoodle the Gambrinous]

Well, you probably now what is best.

Enjoy it anyway!