THE question to be asked is this: is this album bonkers or brilliant? A bit of both, probably.
Veteran singer Waits, a man who's always had a gravel pit for a voice, seems to have gone off at a crazy tangent even for him, bumping his eccentric bandwagon across primal blues, Jamaican rock-steady grooves, African rhythms and something he calls "cubist funk", whatever that may be.
The sound he opts for is harshly new and, as on the opener Top Of The Hill, plain difficult at first. Yet persevere and there are rough beauties here, such as the near ten-minute Sins Of The Father and the sweetly plaintive How's It Gonna End. Great guitar playing throughout from Larry Taylor and Marc Ribot.
Updated: 09:11 Thursday, November 11, 2004
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