Tom Waits – Bad As Me 4/5

Waits just gets better. Age becomes him. The roughening of rasp; slow ripening of facial crags; the drying of leather; the cough of ancience. The decade inaugurating the 21st century had been Waits’ brilliant best: There were the junkyard skronks and grimy alley grunge of 1999′s Mule Variations and 2004′s Real Gone; the lush melancholia and ominous, growled mythologies of 2002′s respective Alice and Blood Money. Then there was 2006′s triple-disc behemoth Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers and Bastards, the third disc occupying his kaleidoscopically eccentric tales and fibs and oddball facts. He topped his reigning decade off with 2009′s riotously majestic live album Glitter & Doom. Two years later and Bad As Me kicks off like he never stopped, with opener Chicago’s frantic horn-chugged locomotive implying that the new album is misspelt. And Bad-ass it is throughout its 14 tracks. All swagger and swoon and roar. On Satisfied he even takes on The Stones, smugly informing: “Noww Mr. Jagger/ and Mr. Richards/ I will scratch/ Where I’ve been itchin’..’ The entirety of Waits’ motley vocal entourage is at play here – the brawlers, the bawlers, the bastards, and then some. Satisfaction all round.