Tom Waits Week: Mule Variations and Beyond (1999-present)

Tom’s longest studio song, “Sins of My Father” is an epic at nearly eleven minutes. It’s about a man who’s made mistakes coming down to the end of his life, and it sounds like it physically hurts him to get the words out. “Hoist That Rag” looks at people who use patriotism to cover their fear, and it’s not a charitable assessment (“Smoke is blacking out the sun / At night I pray and clean my gun.”). There’s the haunting “Dead and Lovely”, and “How’s It Gonna End”, where he asks a universal question and seems OK with not getting the answer. The spoken word “Circus” is a hysterical account of a traveling freak show. And in “The Day After Tomorrow”, Tom takes the persona of a desperate soldier writing a letter home. This song is generally seen as being critical of the Iraq war, but there’s nothing specific in the song. It could be any soldier in any war. But it feels timely, and the pain in his voice makes this one of Waits’ most effective songs. I’m actually going to quote an entire verse here, because it’s so simple and so perfect.