This is probably the best way to experience the music from The Black Rider. I wish I knew German.
At least five of Tom Waits’ album project, barring live albums, were first birthed from a visual medium. The first was the movie soundtrack to Francis Ford Coppola’s One from the Heart, but the rest have all been based around theatrical projects: Franks Wild Years; the 2002 twofer of Blood Money and Alice, and this album right here. But excluding the movie soundtrack I’d say that Black Rider is the record that, if not always suffers the most without the theatrical component, at the very least makes it origins the most obvious. Of the twenty tracks, six are labelled as instrumentals, one only has the lyric “oily night”, and one is eighteen seconds long.
This is of course down to the nature of collaboration and adaptation. Many lyrics were written by beatnik legend (and likely Waits idol) William S. Burroughs, and he was working to help bring to life a project by theatre legend and frequent collaborator Robert Wilson. As a man currently writing about music, I can find a kindred spirit with someone who has made dances about architecture. On top of all this, the album is adapted from a theatre piece, in turn adapted from a German folktale. I should probably stress at this point that, unlike future albums based on Woyzeck and the Alice in Wonderland books, my knowledge of Der Freischütz boils down to basically zero. On some level, this means I can distance myself from a play that I wasn’t even born when produced and thus count it as another studio tale of Waitsian degenerates. And when I do that, I should concede that, although I do not think it is the best of his post-Asylum output, I also think it is probably the most overlooked album in his whole catalogue, and one that lends itself to a more holistic experience.
And I do count The Black Rider amongst his studio output, unlike some outlets, given the three years of work re-recordings that went into it. And as a Tom Waits studio album, one noticeable feature of this compared to any album prior is how it lacks any single semblance to an Asylum record. Even Bone Machine had a piano ballad or two. Yet despite the elements of adaptation and on occasion using another’s lyrics, and the aforementioned holism, individual songs from The Black Rider do not just fit like a glove into the previous oeuvre of Waits, but stand as some of his best even amidst some superfluous material.
The Black Rider could be said to have a grand introduction, on the grounds that it has two. The first is the “Lucky Day Overture,” where in Carny fashion Tom shouts as though a megaphone and introduces us to a cavalcade of “freak” attractions such as Sealo the Seal Boy” and The Human Torso deep from the jungles of Africa, all spoken over a rhythm that, as the shouting generally overtakes it, we’ll become more familiar with later. The second song is an introduction to the central character, “The Black Rider,” with a voice that is labelled as Tom Waits, but I’m not convinced (I should note here that, whether the product of being a musical, vocals here tend to be higher in the mix than normal). We are told we’ll have a “gay old time” in a Germanic accent over what sounds like the chord progressions of a traditional musical, but played on a circus organ. We then move on to one of the best individual tracks of the album with “November,” a sparse piece of art cabaret full of vivid autumn imagery such as dead leaves and “moon that’s the colour of bone,” punctuated with quiet bursts of accordion and the otherworldly presence of the bowsaw. Then there is the dark jazz stylings in Just the Right Bullets which then in the bridges moves to a Bond theme as composed by Elliott Carter, all the while Tom’s narrator describes his job and bullets as though he is an angel of death, even ending by decreeing he will bless the object of his speech’s house (albeit with guns).
The first of the instrumentals, “Black Box Theme,” is a strange little atmospheric piece with music-box-like percussion that moves into the kind of high pitched melody and slow encroaching cymbals you would typically associate with a pretty effective haunted house. And if you want true horror, we then get a piece that sounds like the Empire Theme from Star Wars played by someone who didn’t know the melody. I don’t think “T’aint No Sin” is good by much means, and it would be a completely skippable track if I couldn’t appreciate the sheer novelty of William S. Burroughs himself “singing” about dancing around in someone’s bones. But let’s just say it won’t be on heavy rotation. The “Flash Pan Hunter/Intro” then follows, with creepy crow caws and human mumbles that accompany a moody woodwind piece. But that all too quickly moves to the next track, “That’s the Way,” which if anything acts also as an “Intro” to segue into the following song with a selection of slight idioms that all build up on each other into another in a very melancholic fashion. That of course is built by the organs and clarinet sounds, which move on gracefully into another highlight of the album: “The Briar and the Rose.” One of the most romantic tunes Waits has ever written, including references to his lovely wife, its natural imagery is accompanied by quiet and wilting clarinets and violas that give the whole song the airy feel of being outside, all topped with Tom’s most emotional vocals on the record.
The first and second half begin and end with two instrumentals. The first, “Russian Dance,” is the best on the whole album, a piece that honestly sounds like it is a hallmark tune that was transported from another century. At the very least the echo of boots and bouncing strings make this one very difficult to just sit and listen. The second, the “Gospel Train/Orchestra” is probably the most experimental piece on The Black Rider, with screeching strings and horns like rumbling guts all clashing together from all areas. But after that is yet another romantic track, “I’ll Shoot the Moon,” with Wait’s declaring his love through many gestures, but still maintaining a certain sense of the morbid (“A vulture circles/ Over your head/ For you baby/ I’ll be the flowers/ After you’re dead/ For you baby”). After that the “Flash Pan Hunter” returns the titular character back into the fold, with that also a return to a more cabaret-like tone with the bounce of the woodwinds and organs, but the saw still giving a spooky quality to the whole track (not to mention those deathly moans!). This one has lyrics contributed by William S Burroughs, and his acidic and bizarre imagery from his prose more than reveals itself (“Each sulfurous bullet way have its own wit/ Each cartridge comes with a warning/ Beware of elaborate telescopic meats”). As indeed does the next track, “”Crossroads,” a nice guitar rock track with the title to boot. It has the vibe of a Western, with the passive gravely tone of some of those Western heroes, and includes detailed descriptions on controlling a gun (I don’t want to bring up too much autobiography, but, come on Burroughs; you definitely can’t talk!) which also has the brightness of the organs and viola to counteract it.
The next song, “Gospel Train” follows on from that crossroad with a composition that sounds very much from the Orchestra piece previously. Unlike the low notes in that pieces, this has a continuous bass clarinet – at least I think that’s what I think it is, as none of the other instruments listed seem like they could make that noise – and I should say that personally I find this instrumental incredibly irritating (at the very least in this version’s mix). This is a shame because it does take away my enjoyment from some of the other elements of the track, such as the many layers of exotic percussion and the train whistle which both integrates intself into the piece and gives us location.
Then there’s an eighteen seconds of woodwind. That’s all I got.
And that’s all it gives us, for it abruptly cuts back to Daniel Plainview’s theme song, “Oily Night.” Seriously, the amount the percussion sounds like something from the score to There Will Be Blood, it would very much surprise me if this didn’t influence it. Of course what wouldn’t have been on the movie score are the piercing sax screeches, and a voice saying “oily night” in such a low tone that you almost expect the voice to start a death metal tune. By stark contrast, we move back to the more melodic “Lucky Days,” where the romanticism from before now feels filled with a self-destructed jadedness, in such a way that the lucky day of the title can be either a sign of sarcasm or a signal of hope. This duality of hopeful and hurt follows on to the final song from Waits, the short and beautiful “The Last Rose of Summer.” In contrast to most narratives, we started in the autumn (“November”) and end our most depressing moment in the summer, with a the simple beauty of the organ being unable to mask the brokenness of both his voice and spirit, ending with the final , hard hitting lines: “But I can’t be found in the garden/ Singing this song/ When the last Rose of summer is gone”. In my mind that should be were the record ends, but instead we get the last minute of “Carnival.” Although it doesn’t leave you with the same guttural impact, I see more as both the end credits to the tale we have just been told, and a way to tie it back to the beginning. As previously mentioned, next to his other Robert Wilson influenced projects, this is one of his most fully realised works.
Honestly, the more I talk about this record, the more I like it. It has some production problems, redundant passages kept for completionism sake and less individual great songs than records I consider better than this one, but there are so many great, overlooked songs (particularly the melodic, character based moments) that means I will give this record a much higher placement than I anticipated. The whole truly becomes more than the sum of its parts. And it would be a long six years before we would get another whole work, before Tom Waits drifted back into our lives. And Drifter he would sound
What did you think of the album, though?
Tom Waits Album Rankings
- Rain Dogs
- Bone Machine
- Swordfishtrombones
- Heartattack and Vine
- Franks Wild Years
- The Black Rider
- Small Change
- Blue Valentine
- Closing Time
- Nighthawks at the Diner
- The Heart of Saturday Night
- Foreign Affair