Alice
Artist: Tom Waits
Label: Anti
Genre: Jazz, Theatre
Rating: **** (4 out of 4)
Availability: Widely Available / eMusic Download
(Sign up for eMusic – get 50 free mp3’s)
Alice, called “Tom Waits’ Lost Masterpiece.” Apparently, it’s now found.
Tom Waits originally wrote the music featured on Alice for a Robert Wilson play in 1992, but it took until 2002 for the music to be released to the public. The piece is supposedly based on Lutwidge Dodgson (aka Lewis Caroll) and his relationship with Alice Liddell (yes, that Alice).
Of course, your guess is as good as mine as to how these pieces actually relate to that plot. All I know is that I love the music.
Alice in part sees a return to Waits’ earlier days as a singer/songwriter, with most of the pieces more closely reflecting the jazz ballad style of Closing Time than the extreme experimental blues of Mule Variations. Once again, Tom Waits’ whiskey-soaked voice seems to come from behind a piano somewhere in the corner of a smoky bar.
You can hear the years of smoke and licqour in Waits’ voice, and the late nights on seedy streets in the lyrics. He can range from wistful romanticism (“Flower’s Graves,” and “Lost in the Harbour”) to bizarre, off-kilter Vaudeville humor (“Table Top Joe”). Try to picture a cabaret act fresh from an engagement in Hell, and you can begin to capture some of the spirit of Tom Waits.
Which is not to say that Waits has completely abandoned his taste for bizarre experimentation. Alice is not without its disturbing moments. “Kommienezuspadt” experiments with percussion-driven sounds and Police microphone vocals, while “We’re all Mad Here” toys with dissonance and growled lyrics. And Tom Waits continues his work with spoken-word and found sound in “Watch Her Dissapear.”
As with any Tom Waits album, Alice is about impossible to sum up. But for those who know and love Tom Waits from any phase of his career, there’s something on this album that you’ll enjoy.