Glitter and Doom Live

Tom Waits is one of the most truly innovative and experimental musicians writing today. His exceedingly eclectic catalogue stretches back 36 years and includes nearly every style of music from piano-driven vocal jazz to percussive atonal arrangements. His lyrics are full of cloying melancholic ballads, disparately charming stories of Skid Row, bizarre scenes of old weird America and alluring compositions that defy description. Waits sounds like he has been tearing the filters off his cigarettes and gargling with bourbon since the day he turned 16. And he sings with all the fire and intensity of a flesh starved predator romancing his last meal from behind three inches of bulletproof glass. The sound is savage and wicked and like no one else. He is also an amazingly funny and charming story teller and has made a habit of recording his "wit and wisdom, strange but true tales, and more imponderables on topics as far ranging as the origin of consciousness, the sexuality of Christ, and the lonely journey of the male seahorse" beginning with Nighthawks at the Diner in 1975. Glitter and Doom Live includes a second disk devoted entirely to his manic and mirthful musings. Glitter and Doom Live is a long overdue collection of live material (the first since Big Time, 1988). And it certainly doesn't disappoint. All of the tracks were recorded on Waits' Glitter and Doom tour of the U.S. and Europe in 2008. Surprisingly, the first disc sounds "like one evening's performance, even though the 17 tracks are selected from 10 cities: from Paris to Birmingham, Tulsa to Milan, and Atlanta to Dublin," according to his Web site. The selected numbers beautifully encapsulate the more mature writings of a career musician who has been breaking new ground for nearly four decades. Sonically it isn't all there. The mixing isn't the best I've heard of any Waits album I've listened to, and not nearly the best of most available these days. This has nothing to do with the performances of any of the musicians, least of all Waits'. A great many large venues are designed to hold large crowds and be versatile not necessarily to provide good acoustics. It is certainly disappointing, especially since Nighthawks at the Diner, his first live album, was so wonderfully engineered and mastered. The second disc is a 35-minute, 53-second "compendium called TOM TALES, which is a selection of the comic bromides, strange musings, and unusual facts that Tom traditionally shares with his audience during the piano set. Waits' topics range from the ritual of insects to the last dying breath of Henry Ford." This is the best collection of performances you will never get to see. Glitter and Doom Live is the only choice in new music this year if you have any intention of listening to something that is truly on the cutting edge of artistic performance. And along with the music you get the wit and wisdom of the ages on a space age metal disc; both are well worth your time and well worth the money.

Grade: B+