Black Rider

When dealing with Tom Waits, again, it doesn't really matter. Few of us were lucky enough to be hanging around the Thalia theatre when The Black Rider had its run ... I wasn't even ten years old at the time! Even fewer of us could recite the Black Rider story on call; it's an old German folk tale that was also set to music by Carl Maria von Weber in the 19th century. Consequently, I know little more about the illustrious old tale than I could gather from the liner notes here. But I still love the album dearly.

The more releases we see from living legend Waits, the more it seems that he can't make a CD without the stamp of brilliance on it. Some of these songs easily rank with the best of his career. "Just the Right Bullets" is mind-blowing, and the instrumental backing has a sound I haven't found in any of Waits' other work. "The Briar and the Rose," with its allusions to Waits' wife, Kathleen Brennan, is among the very best of his ballads. Nor is there any way to beat the carnival-barking announcement of the opening track, announcing an exhibition of "human oddities." Indeed.

What makes The Black Rider unusual, perhaps, is the presense of a large number of instrumentals. Of course, Waits had been writing them for a long time -- listen to "Rainbirds" on Swordfishtrombones or "Midtown" on Rain Dogs -- but they reach a new prominence here. Some of them are simply short episodes of connecting music, while others, like "Gospel Train" and "Russian Dance" are long pieces of brilliant and often quite radical music. "Gospel Train," in particular, must rank as just about the most deliciously dissonant four minutes in all popular music. The vocal version of "Gospel Train" even features train noises from Tom!

One other feature of this CD that receives quite a bit of comment is the presense of William Burroughs. I'm not sure that his sprechstimme delivery of "'Tain't no Sin" adds a whole lot to the album, but it certainly doesn't detract. And the lyrics on that song are wonderful: "When it's too hot for comfort / And you can't get an ice cream cone / 'Tain't no sin to take off your skin / And dance around in your bones."

In the end, this is certainly not the Waits album I would give to someone unfamiliar with his work. It could take some getting used to, though I enjoyed it from the beginning. Certainly the logic behind the music is very hard to determine in absence of the theatrical context, but the "remainders," as it were, are more than enough for a feast of very quirky musical enjoyment. Highly recommended!

I have never seen any actual production of this so called (?) musical play, neither does the booklet offer an understandable synopsis. Yet do few if any of these songs seem to do anything like furthering the plot, develop characters or even comment on the action.

"Mood pieces" also occationally pop up in dramaturgic settings, but they do not form a complete musical alone.

Breaking the rules within the frames of musical theatre is of course seldom anything but excellent. But to break those rules one must first know and understand them. One's mind invariably turns to the master Sondheim. In the end The Black Rider turns out to be more like a play with songs than a musical.

One subjective demand I make for songs is that they ought to be good to sing. These songs seem dependent on mr Waits' voice, and simply do not "lay well" in the mouth..

If you wish background music, this is probably no worse a choice than anything else. If you wish to experience real musical theatre, try something like Sweeney Todd instead.