Day 0918 - Punishing Kiss

Ute Lemper "Punishing Kiss" (2000)

I'd not heard of Lemper, but it seems she is an acclaimed actress as well as being a singer.   She had built much of her music career dipping into the past, particularly interpreting the songs of Kurt Weil.  For this album she went with modern composers, though many of them had been inspired by Weil too, so still within Lemper's comfort zone.

Thankfully it's VERY much in my wheelhouse too, with her modern composers being such luminaries as Scott Walker, Tom Waits, Nick Cave, Elvis Costello and Neil Hanlon.   Hanlon's band the Divine Comedy provide backing for much of the album and he duets with Lemper on a couple of tracks.

The album is bombastic, theatrical and bursting with good music.    Though the individual composers' voices can certainly be heard (Lemper even seems to mimic Costello's snarling crooning style on some of his songs) there's a cohesiveness across the album, and Lemper owns each song with a voice that ranges from gentle theatrical murmur through to passionate howl, on the almost Bjork-esque opener "Little Water Song".

The Costello-penned title track is a fun highlight for me, but the whole album is really good.  The finale is a brooding 10-minute late-era style Scott Walker dirge, which is quite frankly as good a way as any to close an album.

Day 0723 - Bone Machine

Tom Waits "Bone Machine" (1992)

This was Waits' first album in 5 years - though the gap had been filled by a live album and a Jim Jarmusch soundtrack.

Waits had been moving away from his jazzy lounge piano tunes and drunken balladeer persona and into more avant territory.  Here he takes that evolution one step further, with a sound that I would class as "demented T-Bone Burnett". 

Waits recorded the album in space in the basement of the recording studio with concrete floors and a hot water heater.  He liked the echo of the room, and used this to best suit the songs.  They were essentially stripped down blues tracks, but with the vibe created by the room the sound feels much denser than it actually is.

The album is light on piano, with Waits' sound moving more towards the guitar and interesting percussion tracks.

Probably not my favourite Waits album, but you can hear him starting to get his 90s-Waits sound going and getting comfortable in that skin.

Day 0559 - Rain Dogs

Tom Waits "Rain Dogs" (1985)

If "Swordfishtrombones" was a drunken left-turn down a dark alley, populated by an assortment of weird and unusual characters; "Rain Dogs" is Waits deciding that he likes the alley-way and setting himself up in his spot around the trash-can fire.

The beat poetry and drunken piano ballads are largely gone in favour of stories about the aforementioned odd characters, backed by honking horns (that occasionally drift into New Orleans jazz territory) and interesting melodic percussion.   Regular John Zorn collaborator Marc Ribot provides guitar for the album with playing that ranges from jazzy surf and twangy lead, to abrasive avant sounds, and everything between.  The music includes remnants of his bar-room piano balladry, and even some country and western, but mostly it's a whole new world.

Waits' voice ranges from his newly adopted barking shout, to a gravelly croon, occasionally even dabbling in a sort of affected nasally cabaret vocal.

Day 0520 - Swordfishtrombones

Tom Waits "Swordfishtrombones" (1983)

Great album, and the beginning of a whole new era of Waits' music.  His wife Kathleen Brennan had been introducing him to a range of avant music and began collaborating on songwriting with him and it really starts to show with this album.

To me, this album feels like Waits' drunken barfly character fell so far down his hole of inebriation that he ended up in some strange hallucinatory underworld.  The opening track "Underground" could be seen as a signal of this, or a paean to Waits' own new musical discoveries courtesy of Brennan "It's a place I've found/There's a world going on/Underground.  The album title seems like something of a nod to Captain Beefheart's "Trout Mask Replica" too.   

The other image the music conjures up for me is the Waits barfly joining a travelling circus and hitting the road.  The jarring instrumentation holds a definite carnival vibe, and Waits practises his ringmaster's holler on several tracks.  There are still one or two gentle moments here, including the melodic outro of "Rainbirds", providing a nice contrast to the abrasive opener.

Day 0472 - Heartattack and Vine

Tom Waits "Heatattack and Vine" (1980)

 
After 5 or 6 albums leaning on his downtrodden barfly troubadour persona, Waits started changing it up here. There are one or two songs where he still slur-croons clever couplets over a loungey jazz piano, but the guitar starts to play a much bigger role in his compositions, and Waits starts exploring his bluesy yell-mixed-with-Cookie Monster vocal that would come out full force in later albums.

For a guy who used to put out albums every year or so in the 70s; the 80s onwards have been increasingly sparse as far as his musical output goes (with the exception of his dual releases 'blood money' and 'Alice' in 2002).  Maybe that's due to an increase in acting roles and soundtrack music... or maybe he's just been enjoying life outside of the 'business.