Album Review: Tom Waits - Bad As Me

For my money Tom Waits is one of music’s greatest storytellers. Every tale of barroom saints and hookers with hearts of gold draws the listener one step closer to believing that they have seen these things. When Waits was inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame earlier this year he left us with a strange pearl of wisdom; “They say I have no hits and that I'm difficult to work with... like it's a bad thing”. In the wake of this enigmatic comment arrives Waits’ seventeenth album, Bad As Me, a difficult album that will most likely yield no hits. The seven years since his last proper studio album (the impeccable Real Gone which was followed by a three disc odd-and-ends collection Orphans in 2006) have done little to dampen his prodigious belly fire. He can still play an angel when called upon to do so, but he plays an even better devil - kind of like he did in the underrated Terry Gilliam film The Imaginarium Of Doctor Parnassus.

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