My Amazon Reviews: Tom Waits "Bad As Me"

One will never be as bad as Tom Waits 
5 Out of 5 Stars

A clattering bumpy ride of an album, this is Tom Waits at his visceral best. "Bad As Me" as the Waits persona as God's last drunken bluesman rising from the gutter to try and find what is better, even if even he knows it's all a myth. All you have to imagine is the man with the beaten suitcase at a train station, aware that baggage follows you everywhere you go, bit "maybe things will be better in Chicago." It's a theme that rolls along from beginning to end of "Bad As Me," with the final chorus of Auld Lang Syne fades from the lament of losers gathered on "New Year's Eve." It's a collection of songs worthy of Waits best albums, like "Rain Dogs," "Swordfishtromboines" or even early work like "Blue Valentine."

Tom has also assembled what could be his best band in many a year. Marc Ribot leads an all-star cast of guitarists, including Keith Richards and Los Lobos' David Hildago (who gets the best licks in the rocking "Let's Get Lost"). It's Ribot's typical pick and stab style that makes the greatest impression on the tougher numbers, including the exceptional "Hell Broke Luce." Punctuated by Ribot (and Richards) guitar snap, New Orleans Brass and sampled machine gun fire, Waits barks about the soldiers we've dumped in Iraq and Afghanistan and then forgotten.

"The Big **** bomb made me deaf,
A Humvee mechanic put his Kevlar on wrong?
I guarantee you'll meet up with a suicide bomb."

Then ends with the soldier/narrator home, blind, deaf and broke, cursing "What is next?" It could be the most powerful song he's ever written. Waits does have a sense of humor, though, and that comes through in the non-sequiturs that make up the title track, but goes a bit overboard when he quotes "Mr Jagger, and Mr Richards" while singing a song about getting "Satisfied" as Keith riffs away behind him. It's "Bad as Me's" only misfire, the rest of the album is just a kick. Given the usual long waits for Waits, "Bad As me" is well worth the time it took to arrive.