Tom Waits - Bad as Me - Album Review

Album Rating:

8

I’ve been on one lately. Taking out my failures on myself, abusing my soul in alcohol-infused bouts of wreckless stupidity. Just ask the bar I’ve been banned from. The security didn’t appreciate me not appreciating being asked to leave. In typical drunk asshole fashion I tried to big time, got a little too aggressive and mouthy, and was basically thrown out on the street. The funny (sad) part is I forgot that it even happened until I showed up the next week and was told I wasn’t welcome. No amount of pleading worked, and I hung head and went home to drown my sorrows in a bottle of Sailor Jerry. I might never learn.

What does any of this have to do with Tom Waits. Nothing really. Except that I’m pretty sure this exact scenario was invented by Waits. Ok maybe Bukowski, but it was definitely perfected by Waits. Perfected stumbling down a cold, rainy desperate sidewalk with a soggy pack of stale cigarettes and a tattered and useless umbrella. The only comfort the voices howling of winter winds down vacant alleys rustling the trash and chilling bones.

Bad as Me continues in the vein of Tom Waits as barstool bard, gravelly rasp of a voice proclaiming wisdom from behind stained teeth. There are all the idiosyncratic stylings, the bourbon-fueled ballads, and all-around strangeness one has come to expect while trucking through a Waits record. I can’t listen to the album straight through. It’s best served up in small doses, like medicine, or more accurately, shots of whiskey. Some day maybe I’ll be able to take a bottle of Waits to the head, but I don’t necessarily look forward to it. This one, this one is gleeful in its grunge and makes no apologies.

He’s the deranged carnie, the mystical prophet, tired nomad, the drunken idiot. He’s not normal and neither is his music, but who the Fuck is and who would want to listen to anything like that. Tom Waits, whether doing covers of Springsteen, collaborating with NASA and Kool Keith, or Sparklehorse, acting alongside Denzel Washington or Patrick Fugit, he’s all of those things. And that’s what the cultish following of Waits lovers have come to expect – it’s more sensibility than genre, more feel than anything concrete.  Bad as Me delivers giving us the timeless pining for freedom and love, failure, heartbreak, and ultimately triumph. The only bubblegum is stuck to the holey soles of well-worn dress shoes. Real music for real people living real life.

Hopefully my bar will forgive me eventually and let me back in. I’ve been known to perform there and the fucking place is like Cheers to me. If I don’t get in, I’ll probably end up hanging out in the parking lot until 2am and all my friends come staggering out to pick me up off the wet cement and take me home. While I waits, it’ll be with Tom. Who might just be, Bad as Me.