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I had the privilege of seeing my third Tom Waits show last night. As usual, he was amazing. Tom Waits records great albums, but live he brings an intensity that cannot be captured. The other two shows of his I saw were five years ago on the Mule Variations tour. In that case, Tom was promoting an album which was a grab bag of songs based in styles he had pursued over the course of his career. Consequently, he toured with a band that was capable of playing a great deal of the rhythmically and sonically diverse material in his catalog. The only consistent element of the show was his constant showmanship. He ran his band like a circus, overwhelming the audience with things to see and listen to. They remain two of the most engrossing shows I have ever seen.

Last night was quite different, largely because his new album is quite unlike anything he (or possibly anyone else) has ever recorded. Much is made of the fact that this is his first album without any piano in it, and his strange recording process in which the band played over vocals he recorded in the bathroom. But the bigger difference is that Real Gone is dominated by a different type of song than Tom Waits usually writes. While most of his albums would quality as dark, from the freak-populated Rain Dogs to the death-obsessed Bone Machine, Real Gone embodies an absolute hopelessness that is unparalleled. Also, stylistically the songs are much more direct than the ones he has been writing recently. It would certainly be a mistake to call them simple, because the music the band is playing is clearly very carefully composed and played. But it is missing the complex rhythms and bizarre instruments that we have come to expect from Waits. Instead, the band simply sounds like a really good rock/blues combo. And the songwriting is shockingly direct. Most of the absurdity and wit we expect from Waits is missing, and in it place are deeply moving portraits of desperation. (Occasionally he gets to away with being equal parts witty and despondent, in lines like “He’s not the kind of wheel you fall asleep at”.) And he writes seriously about God. Not what you expect for a guy who sometimes comes across as a California bohemian. (As I go back and listen to Real Gone, it becomes clear that the record is somewhat more diverse than I give it credit for here. However, the intensity of the songs described simply overwhelms fun trinkets like ‘Metropolitan Glide’.)

The best description of Real Gone I have seen comes from the review in Rolling Stone, which wins the clever rock journalism award for their closing sentence: “The core of Real Gone, actually, is gospel music flipped inside out — an unholy voice, singing about the conspicuous absence of divine mercy.” Real Gone is a testament to God’s absence from a cursed world. And this is all encapsulated in the album’s best song, a straightforward blues number called ‘Make It Rain’. The song is about a heartbroken man who has been abandoned by two great loves: the woman who ran away from him and the God who won’t comfort him. There seems to be more craving for the latter than the former. Rather than being addressed at his missing lover, the song is directed to God. Consider the following stanzas:

Since you gone
Deep inside it hurts
I’m just another sad
Guest on this dark earth
I want to believe in the
Mercy of the world again
Make it rain
Â…
With out her love
With our your kiss
Hell can’t burn me
More than this
I’m burning up all this pain
Open up the heavens
Make it rain

In essence, this is the opposite of the Song of Solomon. Rather than juxtaposing the presence of earthly and divine love, he uses the immediate absence of love in the world to highlight the absence of God. The longing is evident in every syllable Waits utters.

So I was quite pleased last night when the show started out with Waits belting out a primal performance of ‘Make It Rain’. The band went on to play six more similar songs, culminating in the epic ‘Sins Of My Father’ which included complex guitar interplay between Waits on Marc Ribot and Waits leading the audience in a round of the spiritual ‘Wade in the Water’. This entire block of songs was deeply moving, and the band was in top form. The only thing that could have made it more enjoyable would have been having more of my own blues to cathertize into the songs.

The band Waits was playing with was also notable. It included famed guitarist Marc Ribot, who has played on many classic Waits recordings. He sounded fantastic; in every song he produced a different guitar sound that perfectly fit the mood. I know he has a robust career of his own, but he looks like he was born to be Waits’ sidekick. The rhythm section included a long-time Waits bass player and a drummer from Primus. Both did a great job and played in a variety of interesting ways, however either Waits or Ribot held the audiences attention for almost all the time.

After playing the fittingly bleak ‘Earth Died Screaming’, the band changed gears. Waits played a series of songs written for shows with Robert Wilson, which included some uptempo numbers to highlight Tom Waits the showman and some slower ballads. The performances were first-rate and the band did a great job with the songs, however, after the intensity of the songs which started the show it was hard to suddenly switch gears and become invested in something more understated.

A little while later, Waits produced another surprise. He played Bone Machine’s ‘Murder in the Red Barn’, but made it sound like a completely direct blues song. It was a re-arrangement worthy of Dylan, and I prefer it to the original. In the first encore, he got the band to play some understated background music, which allowed him to perform the now-classic ‘What’s He Building in There?’. It wasn’t until the second encore that the technicians brought him a piano, so he could play “Hang Down Your Head” and “House Where Nobody Lives”. Both are great songs, he played them flawlessly, and I am sure the audience would have stuck around to hear him play classic tunes on the piano all night. But this was not a nostalgia show; in fact it demonstrated Tom Waits to be as vibrant an artist as ever. Hopefully he won’t have to wait half a decade before breaking out something else new.

Rating: Real Gone 9/10, Real Gone Tour 10/10