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Album Details

• Artist: Tom Waits
• Album: Real Gone
• Label: Anti
• Year of Release: 2004
• ME Rating:
• Reviewed by: dscanland on 2004-12-14

As you can probably tell from my past Tom Waits reviews (starting with Mule Variations where I pretty much got into the crazy rantings of Waits) I am a fairly new adopter. With the release of Real Gone I CAN"T GET ENOUGH! I've listened to this evil album about 110 times already (well, maybe ten but it's still a lot for the amount of CDs that I have to listen to) and I haven't even come close to being satiated. When a track like "Hoist that Rag" sticks in your head for days you know something good is at play. Even the understatement of "Sins of My Father" is enough to get under your skin. The song spans over 10 minutes but it hardly seems like it. I always think when a song is over 4 minutes and you don't get bored, it's an awesome song. The amazing Marc Ribot joins Waits again here providing a mean guitar on many of the tracks. Tom relies heavily on Ribot here because Waits has opted to use no piano. Yes, absolutely no piano. The percussion is really what gets me. It's like Stomp, Tom Waits style. A lot of it is provided by Waits mouth, grunts and hisses give the rhythm the life it lives. Les Claypool is also found here providing the amazing bass lines. One of my favorite tracks on Real Gone is the simple and fairly quiet "How's It Going To End". It's got a nice gentle flow to it and Waits sounds quite at home on it. Some of the cool vocal percussion tracks include "Clang Boom Steam" and the jerky "Metropolitan Glide". And what would be a Waits album without a spoken word track? Real Gone has "Circus" a great story about a traveling circus and the different characters involved. And the last track, "Day After Tomorrow" has to be the most beautiful Tom Waits track ever. From my brief Waits experience, Real Gone takes the cake. This album is so intriguing and listenable that I can't help but give it a 5 star rating.

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