What’s He Building in There?

Tom Waits - Mule Variations

Break out your brandy and your tobacco, and get ready to grow some hair on those nudie little nuts of yours. Tom Waits emits vitality. He builds a spectacular, surreal world where shit is just plain backwards, but Jesus, isn’t that reality?

Levity is something I’ve seen so many times when I throw this album on for a virgin ear. Initially, everything about his music is absurd and, well, slightly dirty, unsettling. A stiff laugh isn’t an uncommon occurrence, nor is it unwarranted. Mule Variations opens with “Big in Japan,” which is a perfect way to meet Mr. Waits. BOOM BA BA BA!!! It's in your face and it’s silly and it’s fucking ingenious.

“I got the bread, but not the butter,
I got the window, but not the shutter.”

This album is streaked greasy, battered, and fried. Waits’ haggard voice is soaked in a wry, twisted, harrowing vintage of grit. His voice is complemented and often contrasted by bluesy guitars, haunted pianos, wailing horns, screeching violins, clomping percussion, sexy saxes, a goddamn rooster crow. Fuck, you name it; it’s in there. He has a veritable orchestra behind him, and a distinguished one, at that. Each musician guzzles the blues, hiccups from it, which intensifies the old-timey feel of the album.

Nineteen ninety-nine, dammit! is when this album was released. It’s timeless. Let me hand you a little perspective: the day Mule Variations came out, you had probably just finished snorting bubblegum pop off of your Powerpuff Girls matching pillow set. Afterwards, you probably proceeded to diddle your pubescent self whilst pondering the validity of Britney’s boobies, and all the while, the Backstreet Boys’ Millennium album gently sobbed to itself in the background.

But seriously, I love this album because, under all the stench and all the grit, something complex and really rather raw bubbles its way to the surface. When the pace slows, I feel like I can breathe. Waits can capture a feeling, or moment in time, and convey it through any vessel he desires. He has in him the ability to use his words, his piano, his guitar, HIS VERY WILL to manipulate the chords of the heart, a most favorite marionette. Mule Variations is simultaneously real and ebbing on insanity. There is an unusual dark quality to his music; he won’t waste your time dressing his words with unwanted sunshine and sparkle bullshit. “Like a moth mistakes a light bulb/For the moon and goes to hell.” My God, that’s fucking beautiful, riddled with tragedy. I could go on all day about each of the feelings he radiates, but I couldn’t possibly do them justice.

So, whenever your testes feel that chilly draft a bit too easily, put this album on and man up, ya big pussy.

-Megan Smith (Guest)