The album of 2011? It just has to be Tom Waits Bad as Me (released October 21st). As the Rolling
Stone review says, the timing of the release of Waits' new album is impeccable.
TomWaits (born Los Angeles, U.S.A. December 7th 1949) Happy Birthday Tom ! has for decades enacted persona from the underbelly
of the American Dream, the dispossessed, down-and-outs, hard drinkers, lonesome
drifters and out-of-luck gamblers in the era of the Great Depression, such characters
surviving in dire straits come sharply
alive now in the New Depression.
Waits and his extraordinary voice has become a true American phenomenon and a world-wide star; utterly archetypal in his persona, his voice croons, bellows, growls, barks and snarls with characters walking straight out of the pages of a Damon Runyan short story with more than a nod to American literary giants such as William Burroughs, Charles Bukowski and Jack Kerouac. The present state of Waits' voice is show-cased in Glitter and Doom (2009) recorded live at various venues on tour. A showman in the true sense of the word, Waits has also developed his acting career in several film roles, most recently as the sinister Mr. Nick in Terry Gilliam's metaphysical fantasy, The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus (2009).
Bad as Me is Tom Waits' 17th album no less, since his debut recording in 1973. Although essentially rooted in R ‘n’B music, Waits shifts from genre to genre with ease – from Cuban Salsa to Metal, from Beat poet Jazz monologues to Weimar Republic-style Cabaret, from Vaudeville to Gospel and Blues. His song-writing is a compendium of American music. I can't think of any other singer/song-writer who has recorded in such a wide spectrum of genres or another singer capable of comparable vocal gymnastics (his vocal range encompasses 7 octaves) with perhaps the exception of the East German opera-trained, one time Punk rocker, Nina Hagen. And indeed Waits performs a Nina Hagen-style number in German on Alice (2002) entitled Kommienienzuspadt.
