Mule Variations

TOM WAITS

(Anti-/Epitaph)

Waits' debut on Epitaph remains his best effort for the indie label. Mule Variations finds the right balance between weirdness and sincerity, with the clomping, caterwauling "Eyeball Kid" and "Filipino Box Spring Hog" residing comfortably with warmhearted ballads and dissolute love songs. As usual, Waits breaks out his entire chameleonic arsenal of ravaged vocal styles, and the instrumentation is appropriately unconventional. The lyrics don't carry the same poetic dazzle as, say, Swordfishtrombones, but there's plenty of good storytelling. And the spoken-word "What's He Building?" — the paranoid rantings of a suspicious neighbor — is hilarious.

This article appears in May 28 – Jun 3, 2008.

Eric Snider is the dean of Bay area music critics. He started in the early 1980s as one of the founding members of Music magazine, a free bi-monthly. He was the pop music critic for the then-St. Petersburg...