Product Description

Since 1993's BLACK RIDER album consisted of music written by Waits and William Burroughs to accompany a Robert Wilson play, hard-liners consider '92's BONE MACHINE to be the last "official" Waits album before the seven-year wait that endedwith the release of MULE VARIATIONS. Unsurprisingly, Waits lives up to the expectations engendered by that lengthy wait. In fact, there are more stylistic threads connecting MULE VARIATIONS to BONE MACHINE than to BLACK RIDER.
The chugging rock drive of the opener "Big in Japan" (featuring Primus) recalls "Goin' Out West". "What's He Building?" is a wonderfully devilish spoken word piece a la Ken Nordine (one of Waits' heroes) much akin to BONE MACHINE's "The Ocean Doesn't Want Me Today". Waits also continues BONE MACHINE's exploration/deconstruction of traditional blues and gospel, makingfor some of MULE VARIATIONS strongest tracks (the bluesy "Get Behind the Mule" and "Chocolate Jesus"). Ultimately, witha few exceptions, this is Waits' most low-key, ballad-heavyalbum in some time, and he's at his simplest and most affecting on tunes like "Take It With Me", which represent an unprecedented level of emotional nakedness in his writing.

Track Listing

1. Big In Japan
2. Lowside Of The Road
3. Hold On
4. Get Behind The Mule
5. House Where Nobody Lives
6. Cold Water
7. Pony
8. What's He Building
9. Black Market Baby
10. Eyeball Kid
11. Picture In A Frame
12. Chocolate Jesus
13. Georgia Lee
14. Fillipino Box Spring Hog
15. Take It With Me
16. Come On Up To The House

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #6442 in Music
• Released on: 1999-04-19
• Number of discs: 1

Amazon.co.uk Review
Seven years passed between the release of Bone Machine and Mule Variations. During that time Tom Waits eschewed cutting another "conventional" (the term used loosely here) song collection, occupying his time with acting projects, a soundtrack (Night on Earth), a stage project (The Black Rider), and sundry smaller diversions. What's surprising about Mule Variations is how little he's strayed from the old Bone yard through the years. As with his Grammy-winning 1992 outing, Waits intersperses the tough and the tender, mixing exercises in creative noisemaking with tunes that fall on just the right side of maudlin. As with Bone Machine's "The Ocean Doesn't Want Me", "What's He Building?" is an experiment in word jazz that owes a debt to its creator, Ken Nordine. Waits has again assembled a crew of attuned sidemen (including Primus and steadfast backers Ralph Carney, Larry Taylor, and Joe Gore). And, as always, Waits and his wife-co-songwriter-co-producer Kathleen Brennan exhibit an uncanny ear for the arcane. In the end, Mule Variations is the aural equivalent of a salvage shop that, while largely familiar, still has a few secluded chambers and trap doors. --Steven Stolder

Customer Reviews

Variations On A Timeless Theme
Any album by Tom is worth five stars for originality alone, yet though 'Mule Variations' is a very good collection of songs, for me it has a long way to go to match his finest (SWORDFISHTROMBONES/RAIN DOGS) which are impossible to separate in terms of quality. As with 'Bone Machine' and, more recently, 'Real Gone,' I come away always with the feeling that we've been over this ground once too often now, and it would be preferable to have had an album containing all the best bits of his post-'Frank's Wild Years' recordings. Imagine an album containing 'Goin' Out West' 'Black Wings' 'Take It With Me' 'Pony' 'Hold On' 'Sins Of The Father' 'Dead And Lovely' 'Get Behind The Mule' etc., and you would be at least halfway towards an album as good as the aforementioned two. It was once said of the novelist and painter Wyndham Lewis that he was "a romantic in flight from himself." You could say much the same about Tom. Tracks like 'Kentucky Avenue' (from the classic 'Blue Valentine') are the lyrical brothers of poems like 'Fern Hill' by Dylan Thomas, that evoke such beautiful and colourful images of the world seen through a child's eyes. Some find it mawkish and sentimental. Personally, I find it majorly uplifting.

Mr Waits; A Bonzai Aphrodite and Other Stories ( nevertoolate #004 )
35 years at the top of his game.

Between 1973's 'Closing Time' and the triple-whammy of 'Orphans' in 2006
Mr Waits has been resonsible for a whole lot of damned fine music
winging its' way out into this cracked and weary world of ours.

Every Waits fan will have their own favorite album.
Today mine is 'Mule Variations' (this time next year mabe it'll
be 'Small Change' again, or maybe 'Alice', or maybe....).

Released in 1999 on the Anti label this collection of sixteen
pieces seems to me to bring together everything that makes this
great maverick truly unique.
Parched, blistering rock and roll; drunken bar-room blues;
gentle heart-wringing ballads; deeply unsettling monologues.

....and stories! Always with the stories !

Painting small worlds alive with words and music has always
been his greatest gift.
Circus sideshow eccentrics; marginal paranoid loners and drifters and losers and lovers
line up to share their hopes and fears and longings.

....and stomping ! Always with the stomping !

All manner of things get thumped and slapped and crunched
( even drums sometimes ) to create the kind of rhythmic
mayhem and density of raw emotional sound which only this master
could muster. Guitarist Marc Ribot's solo on 'Cold Water' must
have stripped the paint off the ceiling.

....and suddenly it all falls away and there in the corner is
a man with a crooked hat and a broken down piano singing
a bruised and tender love song ( 'Take It With Me' ) of such hushed
intimacy that one can barely breathe until it's over.

This man and his many worlds are indivisible and precious.

Waits and his fierce, black hounds
This is a warm, often sentimental lp with ramshackle (but not neccasarily minimal), homely production. It's roughly half and half piano ballads (some of his best: Picture In A Frame, Georgia Lee, Take It With Me, House Where Nobody Lives) and crackling, temple throbbing, thunder cloud blues numbers (Get Behind the Mule, Blackmarket Baby, Cold Water and the dead fly eyes of the excellent 'Low Side of the Road'). Also contains his potential weird pop hit `Big In Japan', the sinister spoken word ambience of `what's he Building?' and some great rustic compositions such as `chocolate Jesus' and the quirky redneck howler `Fillipino Box Spring Hog'. `Eyeball Kid' points the way to future compositions, featuring his distinctive `vocal percussion'. Probably his most accesible collection since Raindogs and his most succesful `current' record.