When I started about two decades ago to like Tom Waits, I loved him at first only for his deep sad red-howler à la "Tom Traubert's Blues", in which he also liked to put his voice on drunk and old. Best representative of this category Waits songs is on this here album "The Briar And The Rose". What I used to not like was Waits' experimental vein. But at last I am beginning to love the uncomfortable, provocative side of his art, to come out in the often creaky spoken gejaulte, gejammerte, gekreischte, whispered or roared songs. My fascination with this acoustic adventure goes so far as to me that division now downright missing when I hear Tom's quite old, ordinary plates, because the contrast of harmony and ghastly making an album just really exciting. It is time that I now sincerely nicknamed "Man with a Thousand Voices" Spice Tom Waits.
