Tom Waits

Real Gone sounds like the cut end of corrugated metal: in other words, it's instant vintage Waits. But when hip-hop finds him in "Top of the Hill" (or Cuban son in "Hoist That Rag"), the garbled slant-funk that comes out is revolutionary. Steve Earle could have written the wartime dirge "Day After Tomorrow."

Tom Waits bellows through Real Gone like he's been knocking back pure lava, rasping out
sinister names and details: Horse Face Ethel, Knocky Parker, "a tattoo gun made out of a
cassette motor and a guitar string." Waits has all but purged his early records' boozy,
sentimental side -- his one attempt at heartstring-tugging here, the ambivalent soldier's
lament "Day After Tomorrow," is the album's slackest moment. These days, he pr... More >

Shtick fights funk to the death, yielding both a circus spiel with some laughs in it and a battlefield habanera worthy of Motörhead ("Hoist That Rag," "Top of the Hill"). (Grade - ***)