Reviews of new releases from Tom Waits, Badly Drawn Boy, Mull Historical Society and Nine Inch Nails.
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Tom Waits
Blood Money
Alice
Throughout his prodigious career, Tom Waits has had periods of coming perilously close to going off the deep end (those with tamer tastes might suggest he's been swimming in there for quite a while).
Now is such a time. The dual release of Blood Money and Alice finds the twisted troubadour delivering a bent melange of boozy balladry, Tin Pan Alley, avant-garde Euro opera, lullabies, old-time waltzes, tangos, mock vaudeville, noisy oom-pah music, circus calliope sounds and more. Whereas 2000's sublime Mule Variations (his debut for Anti-/Epitaph) is (for Waits) a measured, accessible effort, with rock and blues elements, this tandem of platters declares all bets off, distancing itself from popular music as we know it. There's nary a guitar lick or conventional beat to be heard throughout.
Much brilliance courses through these discs. There is also a fair amount that is off-putting or simply annoying.
Alice is the more inviting effort. Written in 1992 by Waits and his wife, Kathleen Brennan, and originally performed as an avant-opera, the ballad-heavy disc is full of rue, sentimentality, obsession and quiet madness. On Poor Edward Waits mutters the bizarre-o tale of a man with a woman's face on the back of his head who is driven to suicide. Table Top Joe, a clattering saloon-swing number, chronicles an entertainer born without a body who ends up in the circus. Alice has a tender side as well, especially the love note of a title track: I must be insane/ To go skating on your name/ And by tracing it twice/ I fell through the ice/ Of Alice. The positively gorgeous ballad I'm Still Here is the song most likely to be performed by other singers; on the flip side, Kommienezuspadt truly grates, with Waits caterwauling (in German?) over an apocalyptic polka.
The musical backdrop for these songs is a woozy, swirling melange of languid horns and weepy strings, stirred in with imaginative percussion, barroom piano and acoustic bass.
Blood Money's sound is harsher. The horns are strident, the marimba creepy, the percussion more nakedly aggressive, the rhythms taut and urgent.
Nihilistic and unflinching, these are songs about folks from the scrap heap, about death and ugliness and the end of the world. If there's one thing you can say about mankind/ There's nothing kind about man spews Misery is the River of the World. On God's Away on Business, Waits barks There's a leak, there's a leak, in the boiler room/ The poor, the lame, the blind/ Who are the ones that we kept in charge/ Killers, thieves and lawyers.
To further underscore that he's left his penchant for sentimentality and wry humor in the drawer, Waits moans on Lullaby, Sun is red, moon is cracked/ Daddy's never coming back/ Nothing's ever yours to keep/ Close your eyes, go to sleep. Nice stuff to tuck in your kid by.
In keeping with the bleak message and more bracing arrangements of Blood Money, Waits often pushes his ravaged voice into overdrive — growling, bellowing, shouting, spitting, snarling. Sometimes it's just too much. Blood Money is a challenge, yes, but it's admirable in its unrelenting embrace of brute dissonance. And it grows on you.
That Tom Waits could simultaneously display two distinct sides of his muse only amplifies his peculiar brand of demented genius, even if some of the stuff is tough to swallow. (Anit-Epitaph)
—Eric Snider
Alice 
Blood Money 
Mull Historical Society
Loss
These lads from Scotland borrow from British Invasion pop, but they're thoroughly modern. And, don't be fooled by the name of their CD. Loss is very bright and melodic. It recalls The Beatles and The Beach Boys, with instruments piled on instruments, serving up a filling club sandwich of acoustic and electronic sounds, bittersweet lyrics, catchy refrains and kooky fun. In fact Loss is too melodic. There are so many hooks here that the songs threaten to hang themselves. But slow respites here and there allow some time to catch your breath. In an ideal world (where FM radio weren't completely charmless) the pretty, flamenco-kissed "Instead" would be the No. 1 song of summer. (Rough Trade, www.mullhistoricalsociety.com)
—Julie Garisto
Badly Drawn Boy
Soundtrack: About a Boy Composed by the British balladeer who achieved fame in the U.S. from a Christmastime Gap ad ("The Shining"), this soundtrack was recorded for the flick based on the novel by Nick Hornby (High Fidelity). It's a cohesive, shimmery backdrop for the contemporary comedy starring moviedom's favorite fop, Hugh Grant. As a whole, the recording is elegant in scope, harking back to the great folk-pop soundtracks of The Graduate (Simon and Garfunkel) and Harold and Maude (Cat Stevens). However, most of the songs lack the tight structure and punch of the tunes on those efforts. The ballads and instrumentals are quite lovely, though, filled with lush horn arrangements, guitars and pianos. (XL/BMG, www.xlrecordings.com)
—Julie Garisto
Nine Inch Nails
And All That Could Have Been
Whereas most live collections consist of pale, mercilessly elongated, or stale retreads of studio highlights, And All That Could Have Been is a strong addition to the Nine Inch Nails catalog. Rather than attempting to duplicate dark classics such as "Head Like a Hole," "Wish," "Closer" and "Hurt": Trent Reznor and co. re-create them with the kind of emotional force that can only bubbles to the surface in a live context. Like NIN's many remix albums, the originals are merely used as blueprints from which to explore fresh sonic vistas. The merit of Reznor's Beelzebub persona — exacerbated in concert — is definitely debatable; his one-dimensional, tortured-soul lyrics often sound embarrassingly juvenile. However, there is no question that in the warped world of industrial metal, he is an artistic league of his own, challenging and defying listener's expectations each note of the way. (Nothing/Interscope)
—Wade Tatangelo
This article appears in May 15-21, 2002.
