I'm listening to Tom Waits' new album, entitled "Bad As Me." It is now streaming. It is literally the only musical release I've been actually anticipating.

It is good.

There isn't any reinventing the wheel. If you've heard most of Waits' stuff already, you're going to be in familiar territory. And that is a good thing. There's the thought that as an artist, one needs to be constantly evolving in order to avoid stagnation. But Tom Waits has been around for a while, and he knows what works. And his albums still sound fresh. So screw it. He could put out the same album for the next 30 years and it'll still be quality.

I'm trying not to go too in-depth, because I doubt any of you are going to go out of their way to stream this at this moment (since you have to go through a sign-up process and all...). And I'm going to post some YouTube videos, but they will most assuredly not be here by this time next week. But after a couple listens, here are a couple tracks that stood out for me.



Psycho blues. Unrelenting horns come charging at you from the very start. A snippet of this was played during the preview video put out a couple weeks back. I knew that it would be a favorite once the album finally came out, and it just happened to be the first track. That put me in a good mood.




This is the sort of manic rocker you'd expect from the man, with handclaps and a little bit of machine gun providing the rhythm section, a little bit of sinister guitar work... and I think some vaguely Middle Eastern backing vocals about halfway through the song. It sounds about as insane and incomprehensible as the war it's portraying .



This is the closer. It has that maudlin, empty feeling that he does so well. And then he breaks into a rendition of Auld Lang Syne. At first it sounded a bit out of the blue, but it works so wonderfully in that wistful, drink yourself to sleep sort of way. And... really, some songs were just meant to be crooned by Tom Waits.

The man has a gruff, beautiful voice. I couldn't think of a better way to close an album.