MULE VARIATIONS [Vinyl]

Tom Waits | Format: Vinyl

Product Details

• Vinyl (October 1, 2004)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: ANTI
• ASIN: B00000J0Z0
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Audio Cassette  |  Vinyl  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (228 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #53,316 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)
  • #36 in Music > Indie Music > Pop > Singer-Songwriters

Track Listings

1. Big in Japan

2. Lowside of the Road

3. Hold On

4. Get Behind the Mule

5. House Where Nobody Lives

6. Cold Water

7. Pony

8. What's He Building in There

9. Black Market Baby

10. Eyeball Kid

11. Picture in a Frame

12. Chocolate Jesus

13. Georgia Lee

14. Filipino Box Spring Hog

15. Take It with Me

16. Come on Up to the House

Editorial Reviews

MULE VARIATIONS won the 2000 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Folk Album. 'Hold On' was nominated for the 2000 Grammy Award for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance. Since 1993's BLACK RIDER album consisted of music written by Waits and William Burroughs to accompany a Robert Wilson play, hard-liners consider '92's BONE MACHINE to be the last 'official' Waits album before the seven-year wait that ended with the release of MULE VARIATIONS. Unsurprisingly, Waits lives up to the expectations engendered by that lengthy wait. In fact, there are more stylistic threads connecting MULE VARIATIONS to BONE MACHINE than to BLACK RIDER. The chugging rock drive of the opener 'Big in Japan' (featuring Primus) recalls 'Goin' Out West.' 'What's He Building?' is a wonderfully devilish spoken word piece a la Ken Nordine (one of Waits' heroes) much akin to BONE MACHINE's 'The Ocean Doesn't Want Me Today.' Waits also continues BONE MACHINE's exploration/deconstruction of traditional blues and gospel, making for some of MULE VARIATIONS strongest tracks (the bluesy 'Get Behind the Mule' and 'Chocolate Jesus'). Ultimately, with a few exceptions, this is Waits' most low-key, ballad-heavy album in some time, and he's at his simplest and most affecting on tunes like 'Take It With Me,' which represent an unprecedented level of emotional nakedness in his writing.Personnel: Tom Waits (vocals, guitar, piano, organ, pump organ, Chamberlain, optigon, percussion); Smokey Hormel (guitar, dobro); Larry Taylor (guitar, bass); Larry LaLonde, Marc Ribot, Joe Gore (guitar); Linda Delucia-Gbidossi (violin); Charlie Musselwhite, John Hammond (harmonica); Larry Rhodes (bassoon); Ralph Carney (bass clarinet, reeds, alto saxophone, saxophone, trumpet); Nik Phelps (baritone saxophone); Chris Grady (trumpet); Greg Cohen (bass, percussion); Les Claypool, Dalton Dilligham III (bass); Andrew Borger (drums, percussion); Brain Mantia, Christopher Marvin (drums); Stephen Hodges, Jeff Sloan (percussion); Jacquire Ki

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

83 of 84 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Get on this mule and ride. . ., December 22, 1999

By 

Wilbur Farley (Centereach, NY United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mule Variations (Audio CD)

"Mule Variations" is, simply, the most solid piece of work Tom Waits has released since "Rain Dogs". That's not to say I didn't enjoy "Frank's Wild Years" and "Bone Machine"; they both, however, only serve as sketches of the fleshed-out world Waits presents us with here.

From the opening track 'Big in Japan' (a track quite reminiscent of "Bone Machine's" 'Goin' Out West')to the closing 'Come On Up to the House,' Waits is in rare form lyrically and vocally. And he's even added a new twist to his repetoire on this album: a DJ scratching in the background on several tracks, most notably the beefed-up and funkified remix of 'Filipino Boxspring Hog.'

Waits covers all of the various styles and influences that inform his music with deftness on this album. He moves from the guitar-driven ballad ('Hold On') through Blues-based quirkiness ('Cold Water' and 'Chocolate Jesus') to quiet (?) piano crooning ('Picture in a Frame' and 'Take it with me when I go')and never misses a beat or sings a line that seems untrue to what we've come to love about Waits's gruff persona over the years.

His unique view of the world and relationships is intact, and rings as true as ever on this album. These lines, from 'Black Market Baby,' pretty much sum it all up: "My eyes say their prayers to her, sailors ring her bell / Like a moth mistakes a lightbulb for the moon and goes to hell. . ."

This album is a "must-buy" for any Waits fan, and would make an excellent introduction to his music for anybody still on your shopping list.

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Tom Waits: He's better than you, January 8, 2006

By 

Wheelchair Assassin (The Great Concavity) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mule Variations (Audio CD)

If there's anyone in the music business who's managed to fend off the over-the-hill label, it's Tom Waits, and 1999's Mule Variations is one of the most compelling documents of his staying power. Even in his forties, with a huge body of work already behind him, Tom Waits was putting out the kind of seminal albums that most acts are lucky to put out once in the prime of their careers. I wouldn't say this album is guite as great as Rain Dogs, Bone Machine, or Real Gone, but it still sits comfortably right below them, which is saying something. For a contemporary comparison, even the vaunted current runs of the White Stripes and Wilco aren't in the same category as the string of classics Waits has reeled off since Rain Dogs. Most of his songs aren't particularly complex, but (at least from Swordfishtrombones on) Waits has proven to be a master at crafting distinctive, memorable music with nothing more than his gravelly baritone and some rock-meets-blues-meets-folk-meets-country backing sounds. And of course, there's his vocal range, which covers everything from atonal rasps to achy crooning.

Waits's notorious drunken-werewolf howl actually doesn't make too many appearances here, although it is on fine form on the evil mutant blues of Big in Japan, Eyeball Kid, and Filipino Box Spring Hog. These three songs nicely showcase the noisy, cantankerous arrangements that have made Waits such a renowned experimentalist, but overall this album is more notable for its eclecticism and inspired vocalizations than for its sonic adventurism. Even more than with Bone Machine and Real Gone, you get to hear Waits from pretty much every conceivable angle here. Yes, much of it's pretty low-key, but at sixteen songs you'll still find plenty of high-quality stuff, even if Mule Variations does contain my least favorite Waits song in the form of House Where Nobody Lives. Much like Rain Dogs, this album doesn't just contain many of Waits's best songs, it contains next to none of his worst.

After firing out of the gate with the aformentioned Big in Japan, Mule Variations tones down the volume a bit for a while, but what it sacrifices in volume it more than makes up for in atmosphere. Low Side of the Road unfolds into a swampy, minimalist, horn-fuelled crawl that gets under your skin and stays there. Hold On could almost be described as radio-friendly, what with its encouraging message and readily accessible structure, but its shuffling beat and Waits's world-weary storytelling style elevate it well above the status of mundane balladry. Of course, the positive vibe doesn't last too long, as Waits reveals his scarier side once again on Get Behind the Mule, an eerie, smoky little tune whose subtly creepy instrumentation is the perfect complement to the foreboding imagery of the lyrics. Pony is yet another masterpiece of Waits minimalism: a few supporting instruments drift in and out of the mix, but Waits's scratchy vocals and sparse acoustic guitar picking are all that's needed to create an ambience of disillusionment and hope at the same time.

It's after Pony though, when Mule Variations enters its second half, that Waits really starts digging into his repertoire like a veteran pitcher forced to get by on smarts. As the number of tracks gets into double digits, Waits unveils no less than three piano ballads, and while they're hardly among my favorites in his catalogue, they're still notable both for the conviction in Waits's voice and the different mood he manages to bring to each one: hopeful on Picture in a Frame; mournful in Georgia Lee; and (most surprising of all) romantic on Take it with Me. At other times Waits gets just plain weird; as evidence witness the clanging backbeats of the paranoid, spoken-world What's He Building? and the decidedly unorthodox religious reflections of the country-blues tune Chocolate Jesus. And since you can't have an authentic Tom Waits masterpiece without a moving anthem to conclude things, he delivers perhaps his finest such moment here with the rousing, infectious Come on up to the House, a seven-man romp with some of his most strangely inspirational lyrics. He even manages to drop a Thomas Hobbes quote in there without sounding pretentious, which I wouldn't have thought possible. But then, this is Tom Waits we're talking about, so I guess anything's possible.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Waits in all his styles!, December 26, 2003

By 

Pieter "Toypom" (Johannesburg) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Mule Variations (Audio CD)

This great album opens with Big In Japan, a humorous number in bluesy style with brilliant guitar and innovative arrangement, which is followed by the slow, eerie Lowside Of The Road, a real hangover song with striking imagery.

Hold On is a typical sad Waits ballad, which means it's beautiful, tuneful and moving. It has an unusually light rhythm and melody though, unlike some of his other masterpiece ballads like for example In The Neighbourhood or Saving All My Love For You. House Where Nobody Lives is unique too, another gripping ballad with moving words and images. It makes me think of both Mansion On The Hill by Springsteen and the old classic Satisfied Mind.

All Waits' styles are in glorious display including the talking blues of Get Behind The Mule and the deep bluesrock of ballads like Come On Up To The House and Cold Water. For someone who prefers his ballads and his singing voice, I find both quite appealing. The next track, Pony, is another one of my favorite slow melodic numbers embellished with exquisite pump organ, dobro and harp.

This album certainly lives up to its name with its astonishing variety, like the spooky spoken track What's He Building and the story songs Black Market Baby and Eyeball Kid with its innovative samples and percussion. Waits even explores his Beefheartian side on Filipino Box Spring Hog. There's also the gentle love song Picture In A Frame with its elegant piano and the sorrowful country song Georgia Lee.

Mule Variations is a masterpiece of an album that contains impressive, timeless songs of great lyrical depth, melodic beauty and stylistic variety. Whether you like Waits as a phenomenon by himself or whether you like only certain of his styles, this album will not disappoint as it offers enough brilliance for everybody.