Real Gone
Tom WaitsWhy it matters
Waits builds this record out of percussion he made with his own mouth, junkyard rhythms and beatboxing standing in for a drummer, so that the machine is human and the human sounds broken down.
"Clang Boom Steam" is nearly all that — voice and clatter, no melody to hide behind — and it dares you to hear it as anything but a man banging on the walls of his own throat. Against that grit sits "Day After Tomorrow," a soldier's letter home sung plain and quiet, the one moment where the noise drops away and the words carry alone. That contrast is the argument: this is Waits refusing to let age soften him while proving he can still break your heart when he chooses. He came out of it sounding rawer at fifty-four than most artists manage at twenty.
Listen
Tracklist
- Top of the Hill
- Hoist That Rag
- Sins of My Father
- Shake It
- Don't Go into That Barn
- How's It Gonna End
- Metropolitan Glide
- Dead and Lovely
- Circus
- Trampled Rose
- Green Grass
- Baby Gonna Leave Me
- Clang Boom Steam
- Make It Rain
- Day After Tomorrow
- Chick a Boom