(0 users) 
Cover NOT yet available in
Join Patreon for 4K upload/download access
Your Rating (Click a star below)
Track List
01) Chicago
02) Raised Right Men
03) Talking at the Same Time
04) Get Lost
05) Face to the Highway
06) Pay Me
07) Back in the Crowd
08) Bad as Me
09) Kiss Me
10) Satisfied
11) Last Leaf
12) Hell Broke Luce
13) New Year's Eve
14) She Stole the Blush
15) Tell Me
16) After You Die
01) Chicago
02) Raised Right Men
03) Talking at the Same Time
04) Get Lost
05) Face to the Highway
06) Pay Me
07) Back in the Crowd
08) Bad as Me
09) Kiss Me
10) Satisfied
11) Last Leaf
12) Hell Broke Luce
13) New Year's Eve
14) She Stole the Blush
15) Tell Me
16) After You Die
2:15
3:24
4:14
2:42
3:43
3:14
2:49
3:10
3:41
4:05
2:56
3:57
4:32
2:51
3:43
2:47
Data Complete
80%
Total Rating
80%Total Rating
(3 users)
Back Cover
CD Art
3D Case
3D Thumb
3D Flat
3D Face
3D Spine
First Released
2011
Rock
Moody
Rock/Pop
---
Medium
Album
0 copies
Album Description
Available in:
Bad as Me is the seventeenth studio album by American rock musician Tom Waits, released on October 21, 2011 by ANTI- Records. The album is known to have been recorded as early as February 2011 and was officially announced for release on August 23, 2011 on Waits' official web site and various social media networks. On the same day, the title track, "Bad as Me," was released as the album's first single on iTunes.
The album is Waits' first album consisting completely of new material in seven years since Real Gone (2004). Waits' label, ANTI-, recently agreed on a distribution deal with Warner Music Group allowing them to release the album internationally. This marks Waits' first release through the Warner organization since Heartattack and Vine (1980). Upon its release, Bad as Me received widespread critical acclaim.
User Album Review
It’s been five years since Tom Waits released Orphans, a triple album that mixed new songs with a clear out of oddities and outtakes, making Bad as Me his first album of all-new material since 2004’s scabrous and sonically inventive Real Gone. Couple that with his reputation as one of the greatest musicians of the last 40 years and it’s fair to say that expectations for Bad as Me are high.
The album ignites more than begins, the hot, horn-fuelled blues of Chicago rushing straight into Raised Right Men’s dagger-like organ stabs. Talking at the Same Time offers a withering report on the financial crisis ("Someone makes money when there’s blood in the street"), Waits crooning in his familiar, eerie falsetto while slide guitar blooms over a brushed backbeat. But with the disposable roadhouse jive of Get Lost it becomes apparent that Bad as Me lacks the cohesiveness of a Swordfishtrombones or Bone Machine. While those albums develop a unity even as they leap between radically diverse styles, from avant-garde soundscapes to cocktail jazz and hellish blues, the songs here feel less closely related to one another. In this regard Bad as Me is similar to Mule Variations, which offered a taster menu of Waits’ Island Records period. Seeing as it is the most successful album of his career, and a favourite of many for whom it was the introduction to his work, this needn’t be considered a bad thing.
It would be a twisted world where Bad as Me was judged a disappointment, as there isn’t a dud on it. But it’s also the Tom Waits album that most undeniably echoes previous works. Satisfied ”“ a coil of spiky, swaggering energy ”“ could segue straight into Big Black Mariah; Kiss Me is almost uncomfortably close to Blue Valentines; New Year’s Eve, which stows a traditional, sentimental song (Auld Lang Syne) inside a boozy ballad, repeats the same sleight performed by Tom Traubert’s Blues (that time with Waltzing Matilda) in 1976.
This seems a backward step for an artist who, certainly since the watershed of Swordfishtrombones in 1983, has attempted to resist repetition. The bracing experimentation of Real Gone, for example, was arrived at by Waits leaving his comfort zone and abandoning keyboards. But while portions of Bad as Me feel overly familiar there remain some outstanding moments here. Face to the Highway glimmers darkly with a world weariness bordering on disgust; the lyric of Last Leaf, a duet with Keith Richards (who has cropped up previously on Rain Dogs and Bone Machine), blends sorrow and sly humour as it both celebrates and laments being the "last leaf on the tree". It’s the kind of broken-down plaint Waits has been singing since Closing Time in 1973, but is crusted with added pathos when it’s coming from a 61-year-old. The album highlight, however, is the distorted stomp of Hell Broke Luce. Looping a fragment of Waits’ wheezy exhalation alongside the croak of a tenor sax and a martial beat, the song gets inside the head of an American veteran of Iraq or Afghanistan ”“ "Now I’m home, and I’m blind, and I’m broke" ”“ and joins Real Gone’s Day After Tomorrow and Orphans’ Road to Peace as an artefact of Waits’ late-flowering talent for addressing aspects of American foreign policy.
It’s to be regretted that there isn’t more here that calls attention to itself in the same way. Bad as Me mostly finds Waits roaming his property, repainting the fence instead of jumping over it into the next uncharted field. But while this isn’t a great album it’s still a very good one, and even lesser Waits is worth a lot in any other currency.
--Chris Power, BBC
External Album Reviews
None...
User Comments
Available in:
Bad as Me is the seventeenth studio album by American rock musician Tom Waits, released on October 21, 2011 by ANTI- Records. The album is known to have been recorded as early as February 2011 and was officially announced for release on August 23, 2011 on Waits' official web site and various social media networks. On the same day, the title track, "Bad as Me," was released as the album's first single on iTunes.
The album is Waits' first album consisting completely of new material in seven years since Real Gone (2004). Waits' label, ANTI-, recently agreed on a distribution deal with Warner Music Group allowing them to release the album internationally. This marks Waits' first release through the Warner organization since Heartattack and Vine (1980). Upon its release, Bad as Me received widespread critical acclaim.
User Album Review
It’s been five years since Tom Waits released Orphans, a triple album that mixed new songs with a clear out of oddities and outtakes, making Bad as Me his first album of all-new material since 2004’s scabrous and sonically inventive Real Gone. Couple that with his reputation as one of the greatest musicians of the last 40 years and it’s fair to say that expectations for Bad as Me are high.
The album ignites more than begins, the hot, horn-fuelled blues of Chicago rushing straight into Raised Right Men’s dagger-like organ stabs. Talking at the Same Time offers a withering report on the financial crisis ("Someone makes money when there’s blood in the street"), Waits crooning in his familiar, eerie falsetto while slide guitar blooms over a brushed backbeat. But with the disposable roadhouse jive of Get Lost it becomes apparent that Bad as Me lacks the cohesiveness of a Swordfishtrombones or Bone Machine. While those albums develop a unity even as they leap between radically diverse styles, from avant-garde soundscapes to cocktail jazz and hellish blues, the songs here feel less closely related to one another. In this regard Bad as Me is similar to Mule Variations, which offered a taster menu of Waits’ Island Records period. Seeing as it is the most successful album of his career, and a favourite of many for whom it was the introduction to his work, this needn’t be considered a bad thing.
It would be a twisted world where Bad as Me was judged a disappointment, as there isn’t a dud on it. But it’s also the Tom Waits album that most undeniably echoes previous works. Satisfied ”“ a coil of spiky, swaggering energy ”“ could segue straight into Big Black Mariah; Kiss Me is almost uncomfortably close to Blue Valentines; New Year’s Eve, which stows a traditional, sentimental song (Auld Lang Syne) inside a boozy ballad, repeats the same sleight performed by Tom Traubert’s Blues (that time with Waltzing Matilda) in 1976.
This seems a backward step for an artist who, certainly since the watershed of Swordfishtrombones in 1983, has attempted to resist repetition. The bracing experimentation of Real Gone, for example, was arrived at by Waits leaving his comfort zone and abandoning keyboards. But while portions of Bad as Me feel overly familiar there remain some outstanding moments here. Face to the Highway glimmers darkly with a world weariness bordering on disgust; the lyric of Last Leaf, a duet with Keith Richards (who has cropped up previously on Rain Dogs and Bone Machine), blends sorrow and sly humour as it both celebrates and laments being the "last leaf on the tree". It’s the kind of broken-down plaint Waits has been singing since Closing Time in 1973, but is crusted with added pathos when it’s coming from a 61-year-old. The album highlight, however, is the distorted stomp of Hell Broke Luce. Looping a fragment of Waits’ wheezy exhalation alongside the croak of a tenor sax and a martial beat, the song gets inside the head of an American veteran of Iraq or Afghanistan ”“ "Now I’m home, and I’m blind, and I’m broke" ”“ and joins Real Gone’s Day After Tomorrow and Orphans’ Road to Peace as an artefact of Waits’ late-flowering talent for addressing aspects of American foreign policy.
It’s to be regretted that there isn’t more here that calls attention to itself in the same way. Bad as Me mostly finds Waits roaming his property, repainting the fence instead of jumping over it into the next uncharted field. But while this isn’t a great album it’s still a very good one, and even lesser Waits is worth a lot in any other currency.
--Chris Power, BBC
External Album Reviews
None...
User Comments
No comments yet...
Status
unlockedRank: External Links
