Tom Tales: Tom Waits, 'Glitter and Doom Live'

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"GLITTER AND DOOM LIVE" marks Tom Waits' first live album in more than 20 years, and it's about damn time: Tickets for his 2008 "Glitter & Doom" tour were wickedly expensive, and its closest stop to D.C. was Knoxville, Tenn., which isn't exactly within roadtripping range.

The two-disc set includes a 75-minute performance, which is long enough to give a nice flavor of the shows — even though Waits falls into a common trap of culling the 17 tracks from 10 different cities along the tour. The multiple sources make for a hodgepodge effect, as the tracks don't necessarily flow together, and it's obvious that most of Waits' between-songs chatter has been cut out.

That's where "Live's" second CD comes in to play.

Disc two is a single, 35-minute track, "Tom Tales," that compiles tons of Waits' rambling, jokes and story-telling into one long stream-of-consciousness monologue. Although these snippets came from several shows, they've been stitched together so seamlessly that it sounds like a singular speech by a mad man.

Waits quotes random factoids ("There are more insects in one square mile of Earth than there are people on the entire Earth"), rants about camera phones, muses on appropriate ways to approach a woman wearing a mink, and tells a joke involving a really horrendous pun of "shellfish" and "selfish." While the track is an excruciating listen, it also captures Waits' personality in a weirdly charming (if overwhelming) way.

Even with its disjointed nature, the performance disc is great (and far more likely than "Tom Tales" to attract repeat listens). Waits is at his finest when he is at his most trance-inducing, and moody, lulling tracks such as "Dirt in the Ground" and "Trampled Rose" certainly deliver. There are a few tough sells along the way — his ugly bellow on "Falling Down" is a bit much to take — but "Live" does what any good live album can: takes material from several eras and several styles and melds it together into one cohesive whole.

It may not be a perfect substitute for the real thing, but given Waits' quirky (and expensive) touring schedule, it's the best we'll be able to do for the foreseeable future.

Written by Express contributor Catherine Lewis
Photo by Michael O'Brien