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

Alice features a pair of Waits’ greatest freak songs – “Poor Edward” is a man driven to suicide by a second face on the back of his head that taunts him. (“At night she spoke to him / things heard only in Hell.”) And “Table Top Joe” introduces a pair of disembodied hands that makes their living as a piano player. “Fish and Bird” is a lovely fable about a whale and a bird who fall in love but can never be together. “Flower’s Grave” asks the question ,”Who puts flowers on a flower’s grave?”, and “Everything You Can Think of is True” evokes a world where reality and fiction sit uncomfortably together. The album’s a mix of beauty and insanity.