TOM WAITS
– Glitter & Doom Live
(2CD,
Anti)
God, he looks old. Then again, I have been craving each
new album by Tom Waits
for more than twenty years, so not believing in some kind of eternal
freshness of Tom Waits, I should not be surprised, Time does not go by him
unnoticed. I know, it is time, time, time, that we love. Anyway, the more
interesting question is, though, what this release of a live-album means in
the artistic development of Tom Waits. Up to now live albums always somehow
marked a turning in his direction. “Nighthawks at the dinner” was the
end of his late night songwriter / lonely bar pianoman era; “Big Time”
ended the so called Brecht/Weil-phase and now this one might be the
paragraph underneath his long lasting relationship with Kathleen Brennan
(yes, divorced and all that, but she still has production credits on here).
It is completely out of question of good manners to
judge a record by what it might signify for the future, just because that is
dumb, but after the overkill of the 3CDs of “Orphans”-leftovers and even
most Waits-fanatic critics mentioning that he has worked up a set of six to
twelve different styles in singing and songwriting that each song could be
labelled under it is again interesting to question if this is a starting
point for a new Waits. It is in my opinion though impossible to say who or
what that is going to be.
Well, let’s leave the speculating and state that
“Glitter + Doom” is a great live album that shows that Waits and his
accompaniement of musicians, including his sons, can put down all those
songs with emotion and enough variation to keep a fanatic crowd entertained.
The repertoire chose goes back a long way to “Black Rain” and even to
“Rain Dogs”
and puts some new facets and differences to some of the songs. For instance
“Such a scream” is adorned with a funky guitar and a new break after the
chorus, though I admit I liked the album version better. Same is true for
“Goin’ out west”, but I still wonder how many people turned to the
Waits rack in their CD store after hearing that song in that famous scene in
“Fight Club” and then left it wondering.
The inlay of the CD is made with that expensive
printing technique and fine paper that smells after the color used for years
and that you usually only see when you purchase progammes at high brow,
serious theatres or other heavily funded arts institutions. And that maybe
tells us a lot more about the status of Tom Waits in the music world than
whatever I could manage to write about him. After all, as much as there is
nothing bad you can say about Tom Waits, it is just as hard to find anything
new to say about him. He such a factotum in many ways and then a genius
songwriter and performer in many other ways on top. And how he never got
lost in the asylum of the music industry in now somewhat around fourty years
in show business leaves him up there like a statue.
The second CD contains one long track of Tom Waits’
famous live chats where he goes on rambling on crazy factoids (laws in
Oklahoma, vultures, Sarah Bernardt’s leg – if you have listened to some
of the bootleg live recordings going round on the net you may have heard
some of them already.) Don’t kid yourself, they are not at all impromptus,
they are well selected. But then they are also not rehearsed to the bitter
end. The amount of “aahs” and “eehms” at the beginning can almost
drive you crazy in a way, but then again Wait’s is also a master of using
his special voice and intonation and also the microphone in telling a story.
The CD ends with a low-voiced, wonderful solo version of “Picture in a
frame”, just as during the song-CD there is also one chat included. That
is the kind of consequential logic you’ll have to expect with Waits.
