Tom Waits - Hell Broke Luce
(Bad As Me)

Tom Waits switches from demonic carnival barker to whiskey-drowned lounge crooner so seamlessly it’s hard to believe he’s just one person, or at the very least doesn’t have the grotesque head of his partially absorbed siamese twin hidden in his shirt to bark out the brawlers.  His latest is a master class in being old and awesome, in a time when it’s easy to give up hope in that even being possible (looking at you Lou Reed*).  As far as I know, this is the first song of his to be out and out anti-war, and it’s so magnificently vicious it may make Dylan hang up his complainin’ boots for good.

^{*Seriously, what… what the hell was that?  It’s like someone recorded him muttering in his sleep and played it over a high school cover-band’s demo tape.   Goddammit.}