Leslie Armstrong
Arts Editor
@Peachcrate
Much like Canadian wordsmith Leonard Cohen, 61-year-old Tom Waits is famous, among other things, through covers by famous musicians. Cohen’s drone and Waits’ “gargling nails and screws” vocals are unfortunate considering their lyrical merit, but while their voices turn us off, we’ll always be there to check in on them and see how they’re doing.
As it turns out, Waits is still being hisself with his 17th studio album, Bad As Me, released in late October 2011. It’s his first volume of original work in seven years.
I made the mistake of basing my first impressions of the artist on his first studio album, the 1973 Closing Time, clinging to drowsy tracks like “Ol’ 55” and “I Hope That I Don’t Fall in Love with You.” It was an unpleasant shock when I turned on the title track of the newest album and beheld Waits’ wrenching vocals, described by Daniel Durchholz “like it was soaked in a vat of bourbon, left hanging in the smokehouse for a few months, and then taken outside and run over with a car.”
The centrepiece and title track “Bad As Me” is the peak of the album’s eccentricity. Music critics agree that Waits’ style is a caricature of himself—the track agrees most with this statement. He wails and hollers against a naughty-sounding baritone saxophone as if he’s not taking himself seriously.
His other popular track “Satisfied” retains more of that soaked-in-bourbon sound and exposes his talent as a storyteller—his claim to fame. A theme in the album as a whole is Waits’ masochism and zeal for mischief, complemented nicely with a contrasty black and white music video where he dances around in his signature bowler hat.
While he takes the self-impersonation too far with tacky tracks like “Raised Right Men,” he makes up for it with sage tracks like “Face to the Highway” and “Pay Me.”
But aside from the make-up tracks, we have to wonder if Waits is trying to be downright creepy just for the sake of it. The calculated yet unruly album measures in at exactly 44 minutes and 44 seconds. Fans call his album a well-executed vision; those not yet convinced call it devil’s work. Take your pick.
