Tom Waits: mule variations

For a while there, bubblegum had infiltrated my radio. So about six months ago, I voluntarily exiled myself from the world of pop. But recently, I dared to venture out to the record store, and actually found something decent on the new releases shelf—an album the LA Times called a "contender for album of the year." I grabbed Tom Waits' Mule Variations and ran out of the store...

...and into a musty coffee shop with a shriveled beat declaiming in the corner. Waits doesn't sing; instead he whispers or screams out tone poems in a rusty voice. Songs about obsessive men ("What's He Building?") and twisted bedtime stories ("Georgia Lee"), as well as a "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" remake from beyond the grave ("Cold Water").

But the highlight of the album, musically and intellectually, is unquestionably "Chocolate Jesus." Waits questions the practice of force-feeding religious conviction to kids. His character "don't get on [his] knees to pray," since "only a chocolate Jesus can satisfy [his] soul."

Unfortunately, the album also has a significant amount of trite, unoriginal filler. On "Hold On," Waits wails, "Oh, you got to hold on" like Jon Bon Jovi, but he falls far short of the power-ballad standard set by '80s hair bands. And the combination of the mood, length (70 minutes), and lack of variety (title notwithstanding) gets to you. It's hard to listen to Variations for more than half an hour without wanting to jump off Harkness Tower.

Waits leaves us with the most poetic phrase on the album: "The world is not my home. I am just passin' thru." The song, like the album art, is gray and melancholy, stark and striking. Listen to Mule Variations when it's cloudy and drizzling, and feel secure in the presence of one of music's great depressive philosophers. (Epitaph)

—Cayte Pushkareva

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