REVIEW: Tom Waits, Mule Variations (Epitaph)
- Steve Kandell
The most surprising thing about Tom Waits' new album Mule Variations, his first solo studio effort in seven years, is not its bang-on-anything-in-sight approach to percussion or the lyrical gems spewed forth in a distinctive croak for which the words "gruff" and "gravelly" were invented. These elements are familiar to anyone who has listened to Waits' work over the course of his esteemed 26-year recording career. No, the most surprising thing here is that Waits - clown prince of the down and out and the sinking fast, troubadour poet of the seedy urban underbelly - has made the feel-good album of the year.
Just as Bob Dylan's Time Out of Mind was acclaimed for being that rare effective rock album about growing old (seemingly a contradiction in terms), Mule Variations is nothing if not about rural domestic bliss, seen from the eyes of a man just on the other side of middle age. Of course, Waits' skewed vision of middle age is short on PTA meetings or IRA funds and rife with the fringe-dwelling characters that mark his classic work. By toning down the Brechtian aspirations and carnival barker atmosphere so prevalent on his operatic 80's albums without sacrificing the humor and innovation that makes his music so unique, 1999 sees a kinder, gentler Tom Waits. For Waits neophytes, this is a perfect place to jump in, as is last year's greatest non-hits package Beautiful Maladies, his swan song for longtime label Island before jumping ship to punk stalwart Epitaph. For Waits aficionados, there is much on this album to keep interest high and is not the watered-down commercial pandering that the words "kinder" and "gentler" may have erroneously suggested.
The cacophonous wail of opening track "Big In Japan," featuring Primus as a backing band, harkens back to Waits' phenomenally inventive Bone Machine (1992) and "Filipino Box Spring Hog" might be what it sounds like when a jug band's tour bus crashes. But the rest of the album is comprised predominantly of understated, bluesy ballads, sparse where most ballads get soapy. In a perfect world, first single "Hold On," reminiscent of earlier Waits songs like "Blind Love," "Falling Down," and "Who Are You?," would singlehandedly be able to rescue the love song from the evil clutches of Celine Dion. But this is not that world, and "Hold On" is not coming to a commercial radio station near you anytime soon.
The album has a familiar feel, due in no small part to the fact that backing musicians Marc Ribot (guitar), Ralph Carney (horns), and Larry Taylor (bass) are longtime Waits collaborators. Waits' wife and muse Kathleen Brennan co-wrote and co-produced many of the album's sixteen songs. Recorded in a chicken ranch and sounding like it, the tracks on Mule Variations have an organic, timeless quality and could pass for exceptionally well-recorded 78 relics from the thirties. "Cold Water" is gutter blues at its best, followed immediately by the plaintive, homesick "Pony." Musically speaking, there is some redundancy over the course of the album's seventy-six minutes. Bluesy shuffles "Get Behind the Mule," "Black Market Baby," "Lowside of the Road," and "Chocolate Jesus" are all more similar than different in terms of style, yet each one is able to come up with at least a few lines or sonic twists that render the song indispensable. While Waits may repeat himself at times, everything about this album sounds utterly unique from anything else on the record shelves, save for other Tom Waits albums. Ironically, one song that nearly did not make the cut is one of the album's best. On the beautiful and haunting "Georgia Lee," Waits accompanies himself on piano and delivers an elegy for a slain schoolgirl that downplays piousness in favor of frustration, sort of the flipside of a Nick Cave dirge.
Listening to Waits' body of work writ large, it is amazing how he can go from boho cocktail jazz to avant-garde experimental opera and back again without causing whiplash. Mule Variations similarly blends disparate styles while remaining a singular coherent work. More than anything, these new songs ("Georgia Lee" and "Pony" not included) sound downright happy. Content but not complacent. Antique but not antiquated. "House Where Nobody Lives," "Take It With Me," the soaring closer "Come On Up To the House" and "Picture in a Frame," (which cribs a line from Waits' role in Robert Altman's Short Cuts) are all testaments to being in love and settling down in the country. On his records from the 70's, you could smell the whiskey on Waits' voice as he crooned and scatted his Beat-and-Bukowski-inspired barroom tales. If Small Change made you want to drink boilermakers with Hollywood hookers, Mule Variations makes you want to get married and live in a house in the middle of nowhere.
