Alice / Blood Money

Both albums were released this year, and are works for plays produced by Robert Wilson.Alice was originally composed as an opera, and was performed in the early 90's several times. I've had bootlegs for some time, but I couldn't wait to hear the official version of the album. I did not wait in vain. Morose, wistful, and twisted in the way only Tom Waits can be.

Alice is a ballad album, one of Tom's strong suits (as he once said "My wife says I write two types of songs: Weepies and Creepies"). Sweet and sentimental, Alice is nonetheless dark as the heart of a villain. Absurdist imagery is ever present in Waits' lyrics, Alice is no exception. Each song is a character study, trotting out a parade of individuals who seem to inhabit a world very different from our own, yet oddly familiar.

Hot Spots: Everything You Can Think, We're All Mad Here, I'm Still Here, Watch Her Disappear, No One Knows I'm Gone.

Blood Money was written to accompany Buchner's unfinished Woyzcek. It is a jazzy bluesy and of course dark and bitter collection. The story if of a German soldier who undergoes medical experiments and goes insane, killing his girlfriend. A cynical series of polyrhythmic rantings.

Hot Spots: Everything Goes to Hell, A Good Man is Hard to Find, God's Away on Business, Misery is the River of the World.