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Track List:
1. Alice
2. Everything You Can Think 3. Flower's Grave 4. No One Knows I'm Gone 5. Kommienezuspadt 6. Poor Edward 7. Table Top Joe 8. Lost in the Harbour 9. We're All Mad Here 10. Watch Her Disappear 11. Reeperbahn 12. I'm Still Here 13. Fish & Bird 14. Barcarolle 15. Fawn
Running time: 48 minutes
Released: 2002 |
Ah Tom Waits. I got into him late - and I still skip a lot of his material - but he has somehow found a place in my top 10 artists by # of plays over at LastFM. I think Alice was the first Waits album I bought actually - along with Blood Money - not that I remember what prompted me to do so. I think it may still be my favourite, but that sort of talk is liable to let me down as I suspect that my impression is overly reliant on the opening title track.
From the first line this is a tale of woe. Gravelly voiced, Waits recites over a lovely, evocative arrangement that perfectly conjures visions of a tumbledown, dark, sad milieu. It is a very disarming song and a strong opening that stands up very well to my initial impressions on buying it 12(!) years ago.
Looking down the track list, I can bring about half of them to mind, but Everything You Can Think is only familiar when it starts. The delivery here is harsh. The tune is similarly rag-tag and ramshackle as Alice was, but the tone is set by the vocal. This place is grim but there is beauty there too, as Flower's Grave takes over.
Waits' voice may be an acquired taste for some, but it is one well worth acquiring as he sculpts songs unlike any other. The first four on Alice are all slow, three of them are laments, but they are all stunning. Kommienezuspadt changes things up - it is faster, but incomprehensible. The mental image it conjures up is a run-down dive bar popluated by poor and in-between-worlds types getting in their fix of booze and gambling, grateful for not being out in the wider world just now. It is overly repetitive by design, the title repeated over and over, but it somehow works to build a picture whilst the bass and muted brass craft a bustle around it.
Poor Edward is a return to the lament - probably Waits' premiere form - and a really good example of it. Even more so than Alice. I wish I had the words to adequately convey the mastery exhibited here, but it is just too exquisite. Table Top Joe, which follows, is a bar-room, sozzled singalong tune and it feels important to lift the mood. There is a gorgeous piano line here that carries the tune nicely even as Waits devolves into scat. It disappoints me by having the tune fade out rather than end, though - a practice I am far from fond of.
Lost in the Harbour is one of those songs that I only recognise as it starts - a common occurrence in a library like mine, full of random bits and bobs and too large to know everything. It has some very odd bits in, this song, but overall it is still a wonderful track despite Waits' voice sounding even more strained than usual. Astounding to think that I am only half way through the disc at this point.
We're All Mad Here is the first disappointment on the album. It starts nicely, but despite being short, by the end it is meandering unguided towards dissatisfaction, aimless. Watch Her Disappear, which follows, is a story read out over more of the same period tunes - not so much a song, but a short dictation over backing. By the time Reeperbahn starts the tone is maudlin and the song is challenged to keep this going with tragi-comic subject matter; naturally, it does.
I'm Still Here is another beautiful piano melody, so nicely played that it made my hairs stand on end. It's a love song of sorts, celebrating longevity of relationships, even as they change. I had not realised until just now that these songs came from a play, but it makes perfect sense with the consistent ambiance and setting images that listening to it brings to mind. I feel the end of the album drops in intensity and in how compelling it is, but it drops from such a peak that the drop is forgivable, and in some respects the last tracks are the most melodic. Melody is not Waits' forte though so the close is more denouement than climax. The impression as Fawn ends is one of emptiness, but gladness that the listen is done. Forgivable though the reduction in quality is, it leaves the overall feeling of disappointment. Alice is a wonderful album and it does not deserve to be parted with on such unfulfilled thoughts.
From the first line this is a tale of woe. Gravelly voiced, Waits recites over a lovely, evocative arrangement that perfectly conjures visions of a tumbledown, dark, sad milieu. It is a very disarming song and a strong opening that stands up very well to my initial impressions on buying it 12(!) years ago.
Looking down the track list, I can bring about half of them to mind, but Everything You Can Think is only familiar when it starts. The delivery here is harsh. The tune is similarly rag-tag and ramshackle as Alice was, but the tone is set by the vocal. This place is grim but there is beauty there too, as Flower's Grave takes over.
Waits' voice may be an acquired taste for some, but it is one well worth acquiring as he sculpts songs unlike any other. The first four on Alice are all slow, three of them are laments, but they are all stunning. Kommienezuspadt changes things up - it is faster, but incomprehensible. The mental image it conjures up is a run-down dive bar popluated by poor and in-between-worlds types getting in their fix of booze and gambling, grateful for not being out in the wider world just now. It is overly repetitive by design, the title repeated over and over, but it somehow works to build a picture whilst the bass and muted brass craft a bustle around it.
Poor Edward is a return to the lament - probably Waits' premiere form - and a really good example of it. Even more so than Alice. I wish I had the words to adequately convey the mastery exhibited here, but it is just too exquisite. Table Top Joe, which follows, is a bar-room, sozzled singalong tune and it feels important to lift the mood. There is a gorgeous piano line here that carries the tune nicely even as Waits devolves into scat. It disappoints me by having the tune fade out rather than end, though - a practice I am far from fond of.
Lost in the Harbour is one of those songs that I only recognise as it starts - a common occurrence in a library like mine, full of random bits and bobs and too large to know everything. It has some very odd bits in, this song, but overall it is still a wonderful track despite Waits' voice sounding even more strained than usual. Astounding to think that I am only half way through the disc at this point.
We're All Mad Here is the first disappointment on the album. It starts nicely, but despite being short, by the end it is meandering unguided towards dissatisfaction, aimless. Watch Her Disappear, which follows, is a story read out over more of the same period tunes - not so much a song, but a short dictation over backing. By the time Reeperbahn starts the tone is maudlin and the song is challenged to keep this going with tragi-comic subject matter; naturally, it does.
I'm Still Here is another beautiful piano melody, so nicely played that it made my hairs stand on end. It's a love song of sorts, celebrating longevity of relationships, even as they change. I had not realised until just now that these songs came from a play, but it makes perfect sense with the consistent ambiance and setting images that listening to it brings to mind. I feel the end of the album drops in intensity and in how compelling it is, but it drops from such a peak that the drop is forgivable, and in some respects the last tracks are the most melodic. Melody is not Waits' forte though so the close is more denouement than climax. The impression as Fawn ends is one of emptiness, but gladness that the listen is done. Forgivable though the reduction in quality is, it leaves the overall feeling of disappointment. Alice is a wonderful album and it does not deserve to be parted with on such unfulfilled thoughts.
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