Waits, Tom Brawlers LP Vinyl

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 clich?, 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.

1. Lie to Me (Remastered) 2. Lowdown (Remastered) 3. 2:19 (Remastered) 4. Fish in the Jailhouse (Remastered) 5. Bottom of the World (Remastered) 6. Lucinda (Remastered) 7. Ain't Goin' Down to the Well (Remastered) 8. Lord I've Been Changed (Remastered) 9. Puttin' on the Dog (Remastered) 10. Road to Peace (Remastered) 11. All the Time (Remastered) 12. The Return of Jackie and Judy (Remastered) 13. Walk Away (Remastered) 14. Sea of Love (Remastered) 15. Buzz Fledderjohn (Remastered) 16. Rains on Me (Remastered)