Tom Waits - Real Gone CDs • Vinyl Records • LPs • Music Albums

spider-clawed guitarist Marc Ribot and Primus' Les Claypool and Brain Mantia -- who can play like they're falling down the stairs of hell. The percussion behind a lot of these songs is Waits' own coughs, barks and gurgles, a sort of brain-eating zombie-alien-beatbox effect that underscores the lyrics' savage visions. "Make It Rain" is a plea for retribution, not grace, but the God of the ten-minute "Sins of My Father" sneers, "Don't give me your tinhorn prayers." The core of Real Gone, actually, is gospel music flipped inside out -- an unholy voice, singing about the conspicuous absence of divine mercy.

Real Gone sounds like the cut end of corrugated metal: in other words, it's instant vintage Waits. But when hip-hop finds him in "Top of the Hill" (or Cuban son in "Hoist That Rag"), the garbled slant-funk that comes out is revolutionary. Steve Earle could have written the wartime dirge "Day After Tomorrow.