Tom Waits

Issued simultaneously with Alice, Blood Money is the gruff ying to Alice's kindhearted yang. Waits' collaborators, partner Kathleen Brennan and dramatist Robert Wilson, are familiar -- he worked with them on 1993's Black Rider -- but the results are far more successful. In "God's Away on Business," the humor is as darkly warped as anything in his catalogue, and "Coney Island Baby" is as beautiful. The duo of records might take some warming up to for new fans, but both mark an artist at the top of his game.

For a guy who operates in self-imposed exile from this business we call show -- going an
eternity between albums, even longer between tours -- Tom Waits knows how to make an
entrance. In the first line of "Poor Edward," a tall tale of satanic possession and suicide on
Alice, one of his two new records, Waits devours the victim's name with Shakespearean
relish, stretching it out in a malignant growl, like a burned-out coroner showing... More >