Track Listing

1. Big in Japan
2. Low Side of the Road
3. Hold On
4. Get Behind the Mule
5. House Where Nobody Lives
6. Cold Water
7. Pony
8. What's He Building?
9. Black Market Baby
10. Eyeball Kid
11. Picture in a Frame
12. Chocolate Jesus
13. Georgia Lee
14. Filipino Box Spring Hog
15. Take It With Me
16. Come on Up to the House

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #4098 in Music
• Brand: Tom
• Released on: 1999-04-27
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .17 pounds

Amazon.com's Best of 1999
After Tom Waits's six-year stint indulging in other artistic endeavors, hearing his familiar growl is like revving up a beloved old motorcycle after driving around in an SUV. The hard-earned wisdom and arcane sensibilities of this set make it one of strongest releases of his entire eclectic catalog. --Matthew Cooke

Amazon.com
Seven years passed between the release of Bone Machine and Mule Variations. During that time Tom Waits eschewed cutting another "conventional" (the term used loosely here) song collection, occupying his time with acting projects, a soundtrack (Night on Earth), a stage project (The Black Rider), and sundry smaller diversions. What's surprising about Mule Variations is how little he's strayed from the old Bone yard through the years. As with his Grammy-winning 1992 outing, Waits intersperses the tough and the tender, mixing exercises in creative noisemaking with tunes that fall on just the right side of maudlin. As with Bone Machine's "The Ocean Doesn't Want Me," "What's He Building?" is an experiment in word jazz that owes a debt to its creator, Ken Nordine. Waits has again assembled a crew of attuned sidemen (including Primus and steadfast backers Ralph Carney, Larry Taylor, and Joe Gore). And, as always, Waits and his wife-cosongwriter-coproducer Kathleen Brennan exhibit an uncanny ear for the arcane. In the end, Mule Variations is the aural equivalent of a salvage shop that, while largely familiar, still has a few secluded chambers and trap doors. --Steven Stolder

Spin
Mule Variations is name for a hybrid animal--the offspring of a male ass and a female horse. It's a pretty good description of Waits's aesthetic: Always messing with at least two genres per song, he sticks things together and makes them breed.

Customer Reviews

Get on this mule and ride. . .
"Mule Variations" is, simply, the most solid piece of work Tom Waits has released since "Rain Dogs". That's not to say I didn't enjoy "Frank's Wild Years" and "Bone Machine"; they both, however, only serve as sketches of the fleshed-out world Waits presents us with here.

From the opening track 'Big in Japan' (a track quite reminiscent of "Bone Machine's" 'Goin' Out West')to the closing 'Come On Up to the House,' Waits is in rare form lyrically and vocally. And he's even added a new twist to his repetoire on this album: a DJ scratching in the background on several tracks, most notably the beefed-up and funkified remix of 'Filipino Boxspring Hog.'

Waits covers all of the various styles and influences that inform his music with deftness on this album. He moves from the guitar-driven ballad ('Hold On') through Blues-based quirkiness ('Cold Water' and 'Chocolate Jesus') to quiet (?) piano crooning ('Picture in a Frame' and 'Take it with me when I go')and never misses a beat or sings a line that seems untrue to what we've come to love about Waits's gruff persona over the years.

His unique view of the world and relationships is intact, and rings as true as ever on this album. These lines, from 'Black Market Baby,' pretty much sum it all up: "My eyes say their prayers to her, sailors ring her bell / Like a moth mistakes a lightbulb for the moon and goes to hell. . ."

This album is a "must-buy" for any Waits fan, and would make an excellent introduction to his music for anybody still on your shopping list.

Tom Waits: He's better than you
If there's anyone in the music business who's managed to fend off the over-the-hill label, it's Tom Waits, and 1999's Mule Variations is one of the most compelling documents of his staying power. Even in his forties, with a huge body of work already behind him, Tom Waits was putting out the kind of seminal albums that most acts are lucky to put out once in the prime of their careers. I wouldn't say this album is guite as great as Rain Dogs, Bone Machine, or Real Gone, but it still sits comfortably right below them, which is saying something. For a contemporary comparison, even the vaunted current runs of the White Stripes and Wilco aren't in the same category as the string of classics Waits has reeled off since Rain Dogs. Most of his songs aren't particularly complex, but (at least from Swordfishtrombones on) Waits has proven to be a master at crafting distinctive, memorable music with nothing more than his gravelly baritone and some rock-meets-blues-meets-folk-meets-country backing sounds. And of course, there's his vocal range, which covers everything from atonal rasps to achy crooning.

Waits's notorious drunken-werewolf howl actually doesn't make too many appearances here, although it is on fine form on the evil mutant blues of Big in Japan, Eyeball Kid, and Filipino Box Spring Hog. These three songs nicely showcase the noisy, cantankerous arrangements that have made Waits such a renowned experimentalist, but overall this album is more notable for its eclecticism and inspired vocalizations than for its sonic adventurism. Even more than with Bone Machine and Real Gone, you get to hear Waits from pretty much every conceivable angle here. Yes, much of it's pretty low-key, but at sixteen songs you'll still find plenty of high-quality stuff, even if Mule Variations does contain my least favorite Waits song in the form of House Where Nobody Lives. Much like Rain Dogs, this album doesn't just contain many of Waits's best songs, it contains next to none of his worst.

After firing out of the gate with the aformentioned Big in Japan, Mule Variations tones down the volume a bit for a while, but what it sacrifices in volume it more than makes up for in atmosphere. Low Side of the Road unfolds into a swampy, minimalist, horn-fuelled crawl that gets under your skin and stays there. Hold On could almost be described as radio-friendly, what with its encouraging message and readily accessible structure, but its shuffling beat and Waits's world-weary storytelling style elevate it well above the status of mundane balladry. Of course, the positive vibe doesn't last too long, as Waits reveals his scarier side once again on Get Behind the Mule, an eerie, smoky little tune whose subtly creepy instrumentation is the perfect complement to the foreboding imagery of the lyrics. Pony is yet another masterpiece of Waits minimalism: a few supporting instruments drift in and out of the mix, but Waits's scratchy vocals and sparse acoustic guitar picking are all that's needed to create an ambience of disillusionment and hope at the same time.

It's after Pony though, when Mule Variations enters its second half, that Waits really starts digging into his repertoire like a veteran pitcher forced to get by on smarts. As the number of tracks gets into double digits, Waits unveils no less than three piano ballads, and while they're hardly among my favorites in his catalogue, they're still notable both for the conviction in Waits's voice and the different mood he manages to bring to each one: hopeful on Picture in a Frame; mournful in Georgia Lee; and (most surprising of all) romantic on Take it with Me. At other times Waits gets just plain weird; as evidence witness the clanging backbeats of the paranoid, spoken-world What's He Building? and the decidedly unorthodox religious reflections of the country-blues tune Chocolate Jesus. And since you can't have an authentic Tom Waits masterpiece without a moving anthem to conclude things, he delivers perhaps his finest such moment here with the rousing, infectious Come on up to the House, a seven-man romp with some of his most strangely inspirational lyrics. He even manages to drop a Thomas Hobbes quote in there without sounding pretentious, which I wouldn't have thought possible. But then, this is Tom Waits we're talking about, so I guess anything's possible.

I dunno, it's just not a classic
First, let it be said that Waits is one of my musical heroes. He has an amazing voice, a killer sense for evocative productions, and amazing songwriting skills. His songs are gruffly affecting or just plain scary. I have 99% of everything he's ever done.

However, I just can't bring myself to worship this album like so many other fans seem to. Many hardcore Waits fans have noticed this too... there's something fundamentally not here on this record.

I'll try to explain. Waits' music moved from the Weill-y to the Partch-ian after "Big Time" in 1988. His music became rougher, bluesier, darker, more skronky. This mix was really really powerful... Bone Machine is perhaps the ideal example of this, and is one of the most musically interesting records I've heard.

However, Waits turns his back on the first-take swampiness of this trend completely on this record... it seems almost overproduced and too clean -- "Get Behind the Mule" in particular bothers me. The pseudo-junk quality of "Cold Water" and "Chocolate Jesus" seems phony also. This album does sound plenty weird, but formulaically so. That's one thing.

Secondly, the genres he covers don't always work, and often seem like simple reduxes of earlier songs. "Hold On" is way too reminiscent of his twin rock-ish ballads from 1985's Raindogs --"Downtown Train" and "Hang Down Your Head." "Get Behind the Mule" cops its groove straight from "Gun Street Girl" or "All Stripped Down" (all rough percussion and muttered vocals, but again without the excitement of Bone Machine). "Chocolate Jesus" is just pretty dull. It's a very funny, ironic tune, but the performance is sacrificed in favor of a gimmicky field-recording sound that really can't top the clank of something like "Murder in the Red Barn." "What's He Building" is a straight ripoff of "The Ocean Doesn't Want Me." The more piano-led material also often seems like a lite distillation of the yearning characters of Waits' Elektra period, before he "went weird" -- "Pony" is laughable ("I've seen it all boys"? gimme a break) and musically dull, "Georgia Lee," "House Where Nobody Lives" and "Hold On," while performed well, seem too maudlin and emotionally simplistic.

This brings me to my 3rd beef, the lyrics. "Hold On" is, let's not mince words here, "Time"-lite. It doesn't hold a narrative or even a theme, just little greeting card images of heartbreak. Same for "House Where Nobody Lives" (although not as bad, as it has more of a classic sound and feel) and "Pony." "Get Behind the Mule" and "Cold Water" are limp, both also being collections of 2-line vignettes without anything to tie them together. Who can forget the thrill of the caper described in "Gun Street Girl" or the ominous character of "Black Wings"? Waits is simply not up to it here.

However, Waits fans are a spoiled lot. TW's discography is mighty, a 25-year body of work that's almost continual innovation. Waits mastered the story song, the heartbreak song, the greasy blues, the beatnik jazz ballad, and countless other genres of his own invention. By almost any other standard but Waits's own, this is a hell of a record. The strength of the best of these songs (and hell, even the weak ones) comes out live -- Waits rasping cheerfully about the "immaculate confection" of "Chocolate Jesus" makes you grin every time.

And of course, since this review has been more of a rant, I didn't mention the many fantastic songs that absolutely rule. "Big in Japan" is a manic jungle funk with blasts of horn, jagged guitar and a killer sound effect loop. "Lowside of the Road" is clankingly primitive and fabulous. "Black Market Baby" is a snappy jazz tune performed with the sonic quality of dripping water, and has the great line "She's a diamond that wants to stay coal." "Picture in a Frame" is an elegant, simple love song, with a strong soul influence, highlighted by Waits' warm growl. "Filipino Box Spring Hog" is crazy Beefheartian funk with a crashing, crunchy groove. And of course, the back to back masterpieces that close the record "Take It With Me" and "Come On Up to the House" simply astonish; the former being a ballad about the power of memory that will probably live on as one of his most universally appealing songs (a la "The Heart of Saturday Night"); and the latter being a moving soul-gospel uproar with Waits' best vocal performance since (dare I say it?) "Anywhere I Lay My Head."

While this album may be fundamentally weaker than many of his others, it's still a TW album for God's sake, and the man is after all a genius. We have to forgive him his occasional weak moments.