So this has become my most anticipated album of 2011. By far.

It's probably my most anticipated anything, for that matter.



This one'll probably be taken down within minutes, but whatever.



It's his first album since 2004's Real Gone (unless you count 2006's Orphans, which is a compilation of new stuff, old stuff, and everything else in between), and it's one of those things where you're fully expecting it to be great. Or, at the very least, *interesting.*

Waits is 61, so conventional wisdom would be at some point you'd expect him to "lose it" and produce something subpar, just like any other artist struggling with age. But he hasn't shown any signs of getting any worse, and when you're someone who is as strange and unique as he is... all you really have to do is to translate that uniqueness onto record and it's going to be quality.

I get to go back to moving everything now.