Significant longplayers from the past
7 May 2025
On 7 May 2002, today 23 years ago, the now 75-year-old
crooner legend TOM WAITS released two LPs on the same
day.
Waits: “Well, thing is, people get upset when you haven’t had a record out
in seven years, then they get upset when you put out two at the same time.
It’s like, ‘Where are my eggs?’ then ‘I didn’t order this!’ My feeling is that if it
turns out to be a success, then it was my idea, and if it’s not, then I blame it
on someone else.”
Pitchfork wrote about the two records: “Both albums are further testament
that Waits’ inner cryptkeeper is getting sharper, combining disparate instruments
with calamitous precision and conjuring worlds in which celebrities are born without
bodies and razors ‘find’ throats. The music is so expressive and confident in its
spook-ass vibe that it’s flat-out cinematic.
Waits is serving up vintage brittle fusion and somehow breaking the law of diminishing returns. Something wicked this way hams, and it ain’t afraid to be misanthropic and admit that humans are just monkeys trained to parallel park.”
It features songs that Waits wrote with songstress/producer Kathleen Brennan
for an opera Woyzeck by experimental theater stage director Robert Wilson.
#32 in the US, #21 in the UK.
It also consists of songs written by Waits and Kathleen Brennan for the opera Alice
ten years earlier. The opera was again a collaborative work with Robert Wilson.
#33 in the US, #20 in the UK.
.