Tom Waits
Real gone

THE REVIEW

Easy or difficult, nowadays, to review a new Tom Waits album? The inattentive would say easy. Uniform style by now, muffled music hidden behind the primacy of a couple of instruments, a bit of electricity to temper the hermeticism and make the listening experience sweeter for the novice. To complement the whole, a voice now close to the point of no return of ungainliness, and, as if smoke and alcohol haven't worked enough on Our Man's vocal cords, at various points rendered unnatural by sampling.

Those who know Tom's genius and have followed his evolution since BONE MACHINE, however, cannot be fooled. Only seemingly arduous to metabolize, in fact, the equally seemingly incomprehensible words vomited from Waits' guttural. He remains, nonetheless, an incorrigible showman. Or maybe really the Renfield that Coppola made him play in his DRACULA must have gone a bit to his head, never completely all right.
How things really are can be told by his closest friends, or at most, his psychiatrist. REAL GONE represents, however, yet another proof that Waits, when he wants to, knows how to make music. He knows when, where, and how, in the chaotic tapestry of his latest compositions, to insert the gems.
When you least expect it, he lands the blow of a phenomenon. And even when, like in this latest work of his, he concedes very little to the commercial-melodic, he finds a way to surprise even the pretentious skeptic. With SINS OF MY FATHER, track number 3. Masterpiece. Listen to it. Listen to it again. Once. Twice. Thrice. Then, after pressing the STOP button, look out the window, make sure there's no one below, load the stereo onto your shoulders and throw it down. And stop buying records. Everything that the art of the note, since the time of the monks of the Middle Ages, has created and developed is found in that track. If you are professional musicians, change your profession. If you are instead simple listeners, change your hobby.