TheBig3

If the three previous albums represent a Tom Waits in transition, then Blood Money would tell us that he was clearly becoming possessed. This is the album every scary metal you've ever heard wished they could have made. Of all the Waits albums there is, Blood Money might be one of my favorite. Waits throws out all the stops here; wild musical experimentation, vocals that gave up hedging bets and went full on hoarse, and some of the darker lyrics in the catalog.

Written simultaneously with Alice, Blood Money represents the aforementioned "Grim Reapers" element of Waits writing side. It leads off with "Misery is the River of the World," the soundtrack to what could only be a death march of carnival fire ants. A stand-up Bass keeps a 2-beat throb while the rest of the instruments create an entire world with flourishes from some unlikely tools: the steel drum sound comes from a tree that grows in Brazil, hollowed out and played on its bends, crash symbols appear from nowhere and grow like ripples in a pond, and a piano that rides the vacillation between creepy blues stomp and music from the carnivals house of mirrors.

Sound confusing? Read it while you're listening.

To keep with the theme, this track is followed closely by "Everything Goes to Hell" which gives a full on horn section that appears often on the album and is actually one of the reasons that I really dig this album. I'm a sucker for horns, and Waits doesn't give us mere trumpet flashes, we're getting instrumentation. These babies have some personality. And this is an attitude on Blood Money that is pervasive; Instruments floating around the room, in the high orbit of a simple beat or groove and Waits's barking gravel vocals reminding us that the musical drunken revelry is the only escape we have from the horrors that await us when we go back to face the real world.

Even when the mood changes musically, the lyrics keep the clouds grounded, showing a cast of characters lost in their own emotional fog. "Coney Island Baby" and "All the World is Green" sound as pleasant as some of Waits's sappier ballads, but there's an Oh Henry twist to this taste of pleasantries and the way "All the World is Green" plays out, you'd think it was inspired by some Persephonian style of torture.

But if this is taken as a speed bump by the listener, things aren't just going to get back on track, they're about to ride off of the rails. "God's Away on Business", while not as vicious in title as the first two songs on the album, brings a sharp, fast-paced baratone-horn and upright bass tempo. And this song illuminates something you've been hearing from the jump on this album that shows Waits's skill more than almost anything else - the mask of horror that this album wears is supported by an undercurrent of quirky, almost laconic and good-hearted instrumentation. But as they operate in the gravitational pull of Waits's voice, it becomes one of the more sinister albums I've ever heard.

While the album shows Tom at his more...adventurous, and the album has a few more of those "Coney Island Baby" takes (Woe, Lullaby), they maintain the same lament as their earlier counterparts.

Still the album maintains the sort of tone you'd expect from a recording called Blood Money, with some of its darker tracks, "Another Man's Vine" which wouldn't be out of place in some terrible pirate narrative, and "Starving in the Belly of a Whale" with its driving pulse and sharp, jabbing trumpets, create not just a wounded cast of characters but a world punished by what seems to be less of an Angry God, and more of a God who's gone off on Business.

Must Hear:

1. God's Away on Business
2. Starving in the Belly of a Whale
3. Misery is the River of the World
4. Knife Chase [Instrumental]

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