Some artists would think it an achievement to release two albums in the same year. Devin Townsend of course releases about ten every week, but Waits went one better than most here, having both this and the subsequent album,
Alice, put out on the
very same day in 2002. Both are basically music based on two plays, one of which would crop up in a later album four years later, and to be honest as they both came out simultaneously I have no idea which to do first, so I'm just going with the listing Wiki has on his discography, which puts this one first.
Blood Money - (2002)
Again, it's a co-production venture between Waits and his wife, and this time she co-writes every single track with him. What was that about “better off without a wife”, Tom?
This is another of the “experimental era” Waits albums I have such a hard time with, and I know for a fact that I only listened to both of these albums once, and was singularly unimpressed with them. For me,
Mule Variations was the exception to a rule that held true from late 1993 till mid 2002, and again my faith was sorely tested. Let's see if anything has changed in thirteen years.
Perhaps appropriately, given how these albums affected me, the opener is called “Misery is the River of the World”, and has a real
Rain Dogs rhythm to it, a sort of slow stomp and a kind of sullen vocal. There is a great line right away:
”If there's one thing you can say about mankind/ There's nothing kind about Man.” Kind of sets the tone I guess but a real Waits gem. He uses the calliope again here, giving everything a real carnival feel, though not a happy one. Must admit, I don't hate this track as much as I remember doing. It is pretty dour though, and the next track “Everything Goes to Hell” doesn't really inspire any confidence that it may get any more upbeat. Uptempo yes; the rhythm is very “Jockey Full of Bourbon” with some fine bass and a spoken vocal from Waits. Nice bongos and timpani percussion and something that sounds like a marimba or xylophone.
“Coney Island Baby” has a nice twenties-style slow trumpet intro, lounges along nicely in a New Orleans jazz style and accompanied by lovely cello, and once again he uses that piano line from “Innocent When You Dream” right at the end. Creeping along like a drunk jester sidling along the darkened streets, “All the World is Green” has another nice trumpet line and Waits's vocal is restrained and almost gentle, then the tempo jumps for “God's Away On Business”, which I have to be fair, really follows the lines of songs like “Singapore” and “Rain Dogs”. Good though. Also relatively short. Great title too. A slow, weaving horn section drives “Another Man's Vine” (nod back to “Just Another Sucker On the Vine”?) with a very
Franks Wild Years vocal. “Knife Chase” is an instrumental that manages to conjure up that very image as it shuffles along, something (castanets?) making a sound like someone out of breath. Genius.
“Lullaby” is a beautiful little gentle ballad with cello and violin backing up Waits's acoustic guitar, and it leads into “Starving in the Belly of a Whale”, which jumps along with fiddle and bells, and the sort of vocal that, again, we hear on “Singapore”, the deep, gruff, ragged one he often uses. Almost a lullaby in itself, “The part you throw away” is a gentle cello-led ballad with a low, husky vocal and a sort of folky slow swing to it, and things slow down further for “Woe”, less than a minute and a half with a passionate slow vocal from Waits backed by cello and violin before we head into the last instrumental, “Calliope” which, rather appropriately, is played by Waits on the calliope, with the album closing on “A Good Man is Hard to Find”. Running on a slow organ line with trumpet and trombone backup, it again has a certain twenties feel about it, very slow jazz mixed with big band, ends the album okay but maybe a little of a damp squib to some extent.
TRACK LISTING
1. Misery is the River of the World
2. Everything Goes to Hell
3. Coney Island Baby
4. All the World is Green
5. God's Away On Business
6. Another Man's Vine
7. Knife Chase
8. Lullaby
9. Starving in the Belly of a Whale
10. The Part You Throw Away
11. Woe
12. Calliope
13. A Good Man is Hard to Find
Meh, it's not as terrible as I remember. Maybe I just needed to give it a fair chance. Certainly no
Black Rider, but equally no
Mule Variations either. There are good tracks on it certainly, and it's a lot less rooted in the experimental than I had originally remembered. Given a few more listens I might actually come to like it, though I'm not promising myself anything. I suppose it must be accepted that the tone of the songs would have to be tied in to the theme of the play, so perhaps if I knew more about that, I might appreciate the album more. But German expressionist film and theatre is not my thing, so I won't be going there.
Rating: 8.1/10
Does make me wonder though whether I'll have the same semi-change of heart about the other album released on the same day? Speaking of which...