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I know there're a couple of Waits thread, but I figured a triple album probably deserved a new one.
I'm only a few tracks into Brawlers so far, but just as a package it's AWESOME. A 90-page booklet, with lyrics and a shitload of photos, all bound like a book so you can actually look at all of them without worrying about the whole thing falling apart on you.
I'd heard three of the tracks before (eMusic were, and maybe still are, doing Lost At The Bottom Of The World, You Can Never Hold Back Spring and The Road To Peace as free downloads) and I'm finding The Road To Peace quite intriguing. The first few listens, a lot of it seemed trite, but as is the way with a lot of music, it's now seeming to fit together a lot better poetically. What's interesting is it's the most overtly, currently (well, a couple of years or so back) political song I've heard him do.
He's done political before- I mean, look at Hoist That Rag or The Day After Tomorrow on Real Gone (sonically I'm guessing this was recorded at about the same time) but they've been vague enough to remain fairly timeless. TRTP is very specific about its subjects, it kicks ass AND names names, which is a risky thing to do if you want a song not to date very quickly (which is, I guess, why it ended up an Orphan).
Some of the lines are fairly bleh ("the fundamentalist killings on both sides are standing in the path of peace"- O RLY? Wow.) but the whole thing's stuck together with that genius Waits storytelling, and for every obvious line there's a great one ("he was an excellent student, he studied hard, it was as if he had a future"). I like it a lot, increasingly so with each listen.
I'm thinking Bastards will be the disc that grabs me instantly, given that it was his more experimental and spoken-wordy stuff that first got me listening to him. But if his previous oeuvre's anything to go by, Bawlers will probably be my longest-term favourite.
Fuck mindreading. I can tell all this from listening to the first five tracks of a 56-track album.
Seriously, has anyone listened to it all yet? I will have by tomorrow, and shall return to this thread with more, but for now I just thought it rated a mention. And I wanted to be the one to start the thread. |
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