Description
*This is a Vinyl LP*
Release Date: 2018
Label: Anti-
Track List
Side A
1. Lie To Me
2. LowDown
3. 2:19
4. Fish In The Jailhouse
Side B
1. Bottom Of The World
2. Lucinda
3. Ain’t Goin’ Down To The Well
4. Lord I’ve Been Changed
Side C
1. Puttin’ On The Dog
2. Road To Peace
3. All The Time
Side D
1. The Return Of Jackie And Judy
2. Walk Awa
3. Sea Of Love
4. Buzz Fledderjohn
5. Rains On Me
Notes
Brawlers presents probably the best-known of Tom Waits’ personalities, filled as it is with vocal cord damage, found percussion, old-timey arrangements, and cartoon-buzz lead guitar. It’s also the disc that flirts most dangerously with cliché, filled as it is with his well-trod inventory of Americana underbelly images: trains, jailhouses, barrooms, etc. However, the secret of Waits’ act is how well he deploys these should-be-tired cultural touchstones; at the very least, he sounds more comfortable in the role of a boxcar-hopper than he does reciting the ripped-from-the-headlines Middle East folk song “Road to Peace”. Certainly it helps that he continues to buck the aging rocker career trend of increasing cleanliness, wrapping these songs in dirt-grit production that keeps the Big Bopper warble of “Lie to Me” or the garage 12-bar Ramones cover “The Return of Jackie and Judy” from sounding like a House of Blues exhibit.
