A mere two years later, Waits had his next album out, one that would, for the first time really in his career, contain songs that had a political message. Mostly a man who tended to shy from either airing or writing about his beliefs - political or religious - if he indeed has them, Waits's songs have always been more personal, more intimate and concerned with people than policy or national events, but on this album - perhaps affected by the events of 9/11, perhaps not - he boldly stepped into that area which he had avoided up to this point.
Real Gone (2004)
It's a return to the use of turntables, his first use of this new "instrument" since
Mule Variations, which adds a very mechanical, almost alien feel to the opener, “Top of the Hill”; kind of hard to hear the vocal really as it's more or less subsumed under the raucous guitar work of Marc Ribot and Casey Waits (I don't know if (s)he's any relation) on the turntables. Strange track, very like something off maybe
Bone Machine or even
The Black Rider. It's got a kind of swing to it but I don't really like it. It's pretty repetitive and it goes on way too long, well outstaying its welcome. Slower then and with a metal-sounding drumbeat (not heavy metal; it sounds like he's hitting metal pots or something) “Hoist that Rag” opens with a wailing,
Franks Wild Years-style vocal then Waits growls the chorus, the song itself a clear reference to the flag, presumably of the United States but I expect it's meant to refer to any national flag, the idea of dying for your country. There's a slow amble as we move into “Sins of My Father”, and when I said before that a song at eight minutes was the longest Waits has recorded I was certainly wrong, as this clocks in at a massive ten!
There's a real feel of
Rain Dogs and
Swordfishtrombones to this, and it is a good song but again does it need to be that long? Essentially it follows the same melody all the way through, and yeah, being Waits he could probably add another twenty verses, but it has six already. Some very nice banjo and guitar, and we slide on into “Shake it” which has little other than claps and guitar, very
Bone Machine. Again the vocal is hard to make out, though it probably isn't saying much. “Don't Go into That Barn” seems to retread the path walked over ten years previously when Waits penned “Murder in the Red Barn”, and has the same sort of manic, almost panicked vocal with some slick bass driving the tune. A very folky kind of jaunt in “How's it Gonna End?” with a low-key vocal and then “Metropolitan Glide” kicks down the walls as Waits and his band just go all crazy, mad rhythms and a scratchy vocal, a real sort of improvisational jam.
“Dead and Lovely” is a mid-tempo bitter ballad of the type Waits does so well, with some good guitar and bass. It's interesting to see here Waits return to his basic style in terms of musical instruments; whereas prior to this he has used things like cello, viola, pump organ, glass harp, celeste and others on his albums, here he's sticking mostly with the guitar/bass/drums/piano/banjo combination, with a few exceptions of course, but in general it leads to a more organic feel to the record, despite what I said earlier about the metallic sound of some of the tracks. This track is probably my favourite so far, maybe tying with “Sins of My Father”, which has really grown on me. A return to the spoken vocal from “9th and Hennepin” for “Circus”, which has him bring back the chamberlin, just as I mention his using only “normal” instruments, and bells tinkle away nicely in the background, giving the piece a sort of dark fairytale feel, while “Trampled Rose” is pretty acoustic with a kind of moaning vocal.
The vocal is low and the music very sparse for “Green Grass”, with some whistling (don't think I've heard that since
The Early Years - not including the whistle at the end of “What's He Building?”) then we're going all industrial with “Baby Gonna Leave Me”, and so into “Make it Rain”, a sort of slowed-down version of “Such a Scream”. I know, I've said that before, but it's true. Listen to it. We close then on another political song, as Waits in the persona of a soldier bemoans his lot in “Day After Tomorrow” ---
”They fill us full of lies everyone buys/ About what it means to be a soldier/ I still don't know how I'm supposed to feel/ About all the blood that's been spilled” --- nice laidback acoustic line carrying the song, and it ends the album well.
TRACK LISTING
1. Top of the Hill
2. Hoist that Rag
3. Sins of My Father
4. Shake it
5. Don't Go into That Barn
6. How's it Gonna End
7. Metropolitan Glide
8. Dead and Lovely
9. Circus
10. Trampled Rose
11. Green Grass
12. Baby Gonna Leave Me
13. Clang Boom Steam
14. Make it Rain
15. Day After Tomorrow
It's certainly an improvement on the last two albums, and in some ways it's Waits getting back to what he does best, but I still find it hard to get excited about this album in the same way as I enthused about, say,
Blue Valentine or
Rain Dogs or even
Bone Machine. I haven't listened to it very much, but I do remember that I tried quite hard to get into it at the time my brother gave me a tape (yeah, what of it?) of the album but found it very hard to. Could it be that Waits is losing his spark?
There are only two albums left now in his discography, at least so far, but before we get to what is currently his last album that there's one (penultimate?) hurrah as he gathered up all his unreleased material and jammed it onto a massive three-disc, fifty-plus-track compilation and unleashed on us in 2006. That one's gonna be some amount of work!
Rating: 7.5/10