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Tom Waits - Alice Audio CD

A fair review of the Tom Waits "Alice" Audio CD. Please note that the below review is the views of the authors, and authors only. You can get a complete list of all Tom Waits reviews here, or go back to the Tom Waits tabs.

Tom Waits Band: Tom Waits
Title: Alice
Rating:
Release Date: 2002-05-07
Media: Audio CD

Tracks: 1: Alice 2: Everything You Can Think 3: Flowers Grave 4: No One Knows I'm Gone 5: Kommienezuepadt 6: Poor Edward 7: Table Top Joe 8: Lost In The Harbor 9: We're All Mad Here 10: Watch Her Disappear 11: Reeperbahn 12: I'm Still Here 13: Fish & Bird 14: Barcarolle 15: Fawn

Arithmetic, Arithmetock
My understanding is that the insinuations about Lewis Carroll and the underage girl are unproven, but Waits takes the obesssion and runs with it (it's not about sex, it's about obsession). This may be my favorite Tom Waits album. The title song (oh, that sax!) features one of my favorite Waits lyrics: "But I must be insane/to go skating on your name/and by tracing it twice/I fell through the ice/of Alice. " I tend to think that's the narrative beginning, and the ending is I'm Still Here, where the girl is older and the flame has died down.

You can't read the "plot" literally, and there are also songs about Carroll's art, such as Everything You Can Think and Kommienezuspat. The whole thing is quiet, sad, dark and beautiful. .


Alice by Tom Waite
It is always entertaining, but it is also inspirational, and thought provoking. Tom Waite covers a lot of ground in this CD. I have yet to meet a Tom Waite song that I didn't like, though there are some that I had to listen carefully to several times in order to understand them. Tom is one of those artists, like John Prine and Dan Reeder, that is a music genre unto himself. This, or any Tom Waite recording, I believe you will find, is money well spent.


Melodic Masterpiece
Most of the collection focuses on melody and it here that Waits excels and offers contrasts to both his earlier and later work. In Alice, Waits melodies "impose continuity upon the disjointed" (Menuhin).

Alice (the title song), Lost in the Harbor, Fish and Bird are good examples of genius in melody. Without goint quant on you, if you take a one-octave chromatic scale (12 notes) and look at the possible combinations of notes in an eight note bar -- well, think around 20 million.

Waits has done a beautiful job of extracting continuity from the disjointed in his choices of melody in "Alice" - melodies that are familiar without being known, and superb.
.


Alice
All the rest of his material that I have hear, which I a good chunk of it, has left me puzzled as to how someone can make so many consitantly good albums one after another after another. Tom Waits-Alice ****

Alice was the first Tom Waits album that didn't truly blow me away. But what is most interesting to me about Alice is that it was released at the same time as Blood Money which is one of my very favorite Waits albums and yet this is maybe my least favorite. It is my least favorite of all his work after 1990. But I am not saying this is a bad album because it isn't and much like Bob Marley, Tom Waits does not make bad records.

The songwriting to the album, both lyrically and musically are in my opinion among his weakest. The lack of percussion on the album leaves the album too dry to appreciate sometimes, this puts all the emphasis on the strings which sometimes makes the album seems lush. The lyrics seem reheated. What I mean is some of the tracks seem as though Waits is parading other songs from his past and is reusing old subject matter. Especially his Bone Machine album, this seems like familiar territory like the king he traveled on that album. When he isn't doing this all is well.

The album is essentially a opera, but no not a rock opera like The Who's Tommy or anything. He simply wrote and opera with his wife and turned it into an album. Which works in some places like the title track, 'Alice' but not in others like the often skippable 'Barcarolle. ' Other tracks like the albums closer 'Fawn' and 'Table Top Joe' are classic Waits, so the good really does still out weigh the other.

Alice may not be Waits' best album but it is still one that deserves play every once in a short while. It's a great album just the same and one that any collection could improve from.


Tom Waits never fails.
Let me tell you, we are so glad to have it back in our Tom Waits collection. I just recently re-bought this album because my boyfriend had lost it, and I got it for him as a surprise. This album is fun, sad, melancholy all rolled into one. To anyone starting out in their Tom Waits expedition, it might scare them off. Sometimes I think Tom is a seriously acquired taste. But to fans already familiar with this brilliant mans work, I suggest it 100%. .


You can see a complete list of all Tom Waits discography, or go back to the Tom Waits tabs. There is also a good guide on how to read guitar tabs here.

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