Usually when we do the last album of an artist for the Record Club, we like to reflect on everything that artist has done prior, how that relates to the final record and in turn how that record reflects back on its own history. Well, fortunately for this edition Bad as Me does that already on its own. Like Orphans it is a man completely comfortable with his own legacy and style and in turn exploring that, only here all the brawlers and bawlers and bastards are placed into one musical cacophony rather put into their little sections. The musical gang from Ribot, to Richards, to the guys from Primus to his lovely partner in crime Kathleen Brennan are all here, and they are here to prove just how bad to the bone they are. He extends that to the listeners to; as Waits says “You’re all the same kind of bad as me.”
This record that moves from styles as it does locations, from the blues rock of Mule Variations to the lo-fi of Real Gone to the experimentations of his Frank Trilogy. As a result, however, this does suffer from one drawback. Most other post-Asylum records – or indeed every after Small Change, has some kind of major distinguishing artistic trait and/or style. But here – with maybe the exception of not allowing tracks to go on for sprawling lengths – this album does not have that. But, then again, maybe its comfortableness as the “Tom Waits” record is its own aesthetic. Even then there are more than enough great songs to make this album a joy, one that proves how Tom Waits can force cohesion to a record just by sheer force of his own personality
Tom is here to take us on that musical journey from “Chicago.” Hell, he even shouts out “all aboard,” which can’t help but make one excited, as can’t the music of bouncing pianos and banjos, which make it sound initially like the chase music of a silent film. As the narrator does not yet know whether things in Chicago he makes it sound like a magical place (“There’s so much magic we have known/ On this sapphire we call home”). Less magical is the world depicted in “Raised Right Men,” with images or mines and morgues, and people all struggling to do well. The percussion feels like it’s the bongos out of “Everything Goes to Hell”, and the muted blues chords are brilliantly counteracted with the harsh chords from the organ. The blues chords in “Talking at the Same Time” meanwhile, one of my favourite songs from the album, are much fuller, with an echo that rings through the bright yet foreboding piano notes and trumpets. One would relate the topics given in this track – “everyone knows umbrellas cost more in the rain” – to the growing political consciousness that has been evident since Real Gone, but the way Waits phrases this here is so universal I wouldn’t really consider it a “political song” (more on that later).
“Get Lost” gets into a musical territory that I’m surprised Waits doesn’t go into more often, which would be that of rockabilly. The repeating guitar licks and thudding beat all add up to a track with a great propulsion – ironic for someone who doesn’t know where they’re going – and features what I believe is a rare guitar solo in a Waits song half way through in a high octane piece of adrenaline fuelled rock (that I assume came from the great Marc Ribot). By contrast, “Face to the Highway” is much quieter. You can feel the wind whistling in the air around the song in a Mule Variations styli, the keyboards giving of a music-box vibe, as Tom soberly details the means in which different people and different things all need something to occupy themselves. That moves somewhat into “Pay Me,” a track like something from Franks Wild Years with its major accordion sound, wherin the narrator tries to find a place on the stage, and that place is undeniably tied to a sense of having the means to survive, both in a psychic and monetary way. The journey to find this is as lost as in “Get Lost”, because eventually “All roads lead to the end of the world.”
In the midst of having a lost sense of self, Waits goes “Back Into the Crowd”. I consider this one of the weaker tracks on the album – probably because it’s a quieter track without the supressed emotions forcing themselves onto the surface – but Tom’s softer (for Tom!) voice and the bright guitar still make this a lovely song. But this moves on to another highlight, the title track, where Tom gives one of his craziest vocal performances in a whirlwind of guitars, saxophones and harmonica. The voices goes from almost pre-pubescent crackling to low and ominous tones, all the while accusing us of the kind of antic one of his character would more than get up to. We then move back again to softer piece on Bad as Me, one that most brings to mind the piano ballads from the Asylum era albums like Small Change and Blue Valentine. It seems at first like traditionally sentimental romance song, but the excitement of “kissing someone like a stranger” also hides a sense of disconnection from familiarity, and wanting to revitalize that sense of youthful energy (“I want to believe our loves a mystery/I want to believe our loves a sin”)
Speaking of songs that relate to past Waits, some people commented at how much “Satisfied” sounds like “Big Black Mariah” from Rain Dogs, and I’m not necessarily going to disagree. But I don’t care, because that was a great song, and this song is just different enough to make it its own beast (I’m a AC/DC fan, I definitely can’t judge). Mainly in both the organ and the way Keith Richards guitar, once unfamiliar with the concept of having said contentment, rolling along (Waits even refers to that influence in the lyrics with “Mr Jagger and Mr Richards/ I will scratch where I’ve been itching”). That is one of three edition from Richards in a row. The second is more of a blues ballad, “Last Leaf”, that has the kind of autumn feel that The Black Rider could have, though here it is much more intimate, and maintains that intimacy despite use of a chorus. The next song, “Hell Breaks Luce,” literally made me say “Holy Shit!” It combines that fiery political stances of latter day Waits with the theatrics of both eighties Waits and Blood Money in a potion that will give anyone a kick. The anger of this track is certainly fuelled by the seven years since he first commented on the Iraq conflict in Real Gone – and can still topically discuss it – but it certainly it complimented by the stomping beat which includes GUNFIRE and Keith Richards just hammering that guitar. The lyrics are some of the most biting and blackly funny they have been in his whole career (Nimrod Bodfish have you any wool/Get me another body bag the body bag’s full), with beautifully placed profanity and a marching choral chant that sky rockets this to one of my top five all time Tom Waits songs.
The album officially ends with the perfect marriage of past and present with “New Years Eve”, a way in my mind of making up for not making “Tom Traubert Blues” the conclusion to Small Change by making a similar conceptual song for this albums. This one based around “Auld Lang Syne,” and with the kind of mandolin, accordion and trumpet instrumentation that Waits could only make now, Waits documents small personal heartbreaks until they accumulate on each other to create a grand epic. And by the end of the song it may be the end of the album, but the narrator is “going back to driving truck”, still keeping moving along… *
As will Waits. Eighteen albums, fourty years, and still the fiery theatrical growling dog audiences around the world love him for, and with no look of stopping. Bad as Me might be too loose to be one of my favourite records, but it has songs on it that prove how much passion he can produce both from himself and from his audiences. Just when you think you think you have completely settled with the idea of the Tom Waits record, he can still surprise you. No one will be as bad as Tom Waits. And maybe, also, as good.
What did you think of the album, though?
Tom Waits Album Rankings
- Blood Money
- Rain Dogs
- Bone Machine
- Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers and Bastards
- Alice
- Swordfishtrombones
- Mule Variations
- Franks Wild Year
- Blue Valentine
- Bad As Me
- Heartattack and Vine
- Real Gone
- Small Change
- Closing Time
- The Black Rider
- Nighthawks at the Diner
- The Heart of Saturday Night
- Foreign Affair
*…as indeed, does this Deluxe edition. Not to disrespect these tracks, but for eases sake I will comment on them as notes
– “She Stole the Bush”
A Franks Wild Year styled piece of theatrics, particularly in the stabs of trumpets, in this tale that could anything between a feeling of existential dread or a simple robbery.
– “Tell Me”
The glockenspiel and clean guitars make “Tell Me” a pretty melancholic rock number. Quiet similar thematically to “Face to the Highway,” with some great individual lines (“why does a wedding ring have the hardest stone”)
– “After You Die”
A simple conceit – contemplating what happens to people after they die – that is delivered like a dark campfire tune. Ideas are given to us in list form, in a Whitmanesque piece in which each line builds upon another.