Join Amazon Prime and ship Two-Day for free and Overnight for $3.99. Already a member? Sign in.

 

or
Sign in to turn on 1-Click ordering.
 
 
More Buying Choices
65 used & new from $5.05

Have one to sell? Sell yours here
 
   
Available to Download Now
 
Buy the MP3 album for $9.90
 
 
 
 
Tooth of Crime
 
See larger image and other views
 

Tooth of Crime

T Bone Burnett
3.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews) More about this product

List Price: $18.98
Price: $18.98 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. Details
  Special Offers Available
In Stock.
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com. Gift-wrap available.

Want it delivered Monday, July 13? Choose One-Day Shipping at checkout. Details
40 new from $8.48 24 used from $5.05 1 collectible from $35.00
Buy the MP3 album for $9.90 at the Amazon MP3 Downloads store.

Amazon's T Bone Burnett Store
Find all the CDs, MP3s, and vinyl, plus photos, videos, biographies, discussions, and more. Visit the store.

Special Offers and Product Promotions

  • Get $1 worth of MP3 downloads from Amazon MP3 after you order your item. Here's how (restrictions apply)
  • Purchase this CD and get 12 issues of Rolling Stone for only $2.95. that's less than $0.25 an issue. Here's how (restrictions apply)
  • Interact With Your Music: Discover, listen to, and buy new music, all from the pages of SPIN's digital edition, free to Amazon customers.


Frequently Bought Together

Customers buy this album with Don't Do Anything ~ Sam Phillips

Tooth of Crime + Don't Do Anything
  • This item: Tooth of Crime ~ T Bone Burnett

    In Stock.
    Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
    Eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. Details

  • Don't Do Anything ~ Sam Phillips

    In Stock.
    Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
    Eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. Details


Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought

All I Intended to Be

All I Intended to Be

~ Emmylou Harris
4.4 out of 5 stars (106)  $13.99
Momofuku

Momofuku

~ Elvis Costello
4.2 out of 5 stars (43)  $13.98
Mudcrutch

Mudcrutch

~ Mudcrutch
4.6 out of 5 stars (89)  $14.99
Harps & Angels

Harps & Angels

~ Randy Newman
4.3 out of 5 stars (64)  $14.99
Little Honey

Little Honey

~ Lucinda Williams
3.5 out of 5 stars (59)  $11.49
Explore similar items

Product Details

  • Audio CD (May 13, 2008)
  • Original Release Date: May 13, 2008
  • Number of Discs: 1
  • Label: Nonesuch
  • ASIN: B001662F9Q
  • In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
  • Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.com Sales Rank: #76,251 in Music (See Bestsellers in Music)

Listen to Samples and Buy MP3s

Songs from this album are available to purchase as MP3s. Click on "Buy MP3" or view the MP3 Album.

Samples
Song Title Time Price
listen  1. Anything I Say Can and Will Be Used Against You 4:00$0.99 Buy Track
listen  2. Dope Island 4:14$0.99 Buy Track
listen  3. The Slowdown 4:42$0.99 Buy Track
listen  4. Blind Man 1:21$0.99 Buy Track
listen  5. Kill Zone 4:19$0.99 Buy Track
listen  6. The Rat Age 5:30$0.99 Buy Track
listen  7. Swizzle Stick 5:10$0.99 Buy Track
listen  8. Telepresence [Make the Metal Scream] 3:05$0.99 Buy Track
listen  9. Here Come the Philistines (fixed) 3:31$0.99 Buy Track
listen10. Sweet Lullaby (fixed) 3:23$0.99 Buy Track


Editorial Reviews

Product Description
You re my friend, but I m going to kill you.
Don t fret. T Bone Burnett hasn t gone off the deep end. At least not in that way. He s merely explaining the tone of the putyou-
on-your-heels opening track of his gripping new album, Tooth of Crime. At once seductive and unsettling from the haunting
Dope Island (featuring alluring vocals by Sam Phillips) to oddly romantic Kill Zone to the brutal The Rat Age to the atmospheric
Telepresence to the hill-country blues elegy that closes the tale, Sweet Lullaby it s a set of songs capturing a state of identity
and cultural dislocation with an air that could be termed dramatic, even theatrical in places. Fittingly.
The album completed fresh off Burnett s stunning work as producer and arranger of the hugely successful Robert Plant/Allison
Krauss collaboration Raising Sand, and featuring some of the same musicians is a vibrant outgrowth of a long-running collaboration
with playwright Sam Shepard that began with the 1996 musical staging in New York of his noted play of the same name. The songs
are arresting distillations of modern conflicts and personal drama in a modern hyper-reality. The arrangements are imaginative and
inventive. The performancesare stunning, masterful, and unpredictable.
Tooth of Crime is a prophetic play that Sam first wrote in 1972, and it takes place in a time very much like now, Burnett explains.
It s a time when there are zones of fame that flare up and people can become incredibly famous in their own zone and nobody
else can know it. And then the zone completely disappears, but the famous person doesn t realize it because you can t even find
the zone anymore. You have to hook up a toaster to a television to a microwave to a piano very post-apocalyptic. That was the
initial inspiration for the album. These songs came together like a broken mirror, and you get a bunch of shards and start putting
them together and create a lot of different angles, he says. That s this group of songs, this process.
Working with what has become a solid musical team anchored by Marc Ribot (Tom Waits, Elvis Costello, John Zorn) and drummer
Jim Keltner (John Lennon, George Harrison, Eric Clapton, etc.), Burnett crafted the sound of Tooth of Crime into a unique aesthetic.
It s an approach that has evolved over decades of distinctive work for Burnett, both as a recording artist in his own right and in guiding
an elite roster of artists and movie music projects: The 2000 Grammy album of the year O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack;
the Oscar-nominated The Scarlet Tide for the film Cold Mountain (for which he also produced the soundtrack); albums by Bob
Dylan, Elvis Costello, Los Lobos, Roy Orbison, Ralph Stanley, Tony Bennett and k.d. lang; and recent projects such as Raising Sand,
the re-imagining of the Beatles catalog in Across the Universe, and the music for the Johnny Cash biopic Walk The Line, are just
highlights of a resume that stands as one of the most productive, distinctive, and lauded production careers of modern music

Tags Customers Associate with This Product

 (What's this?)
Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
Check the boxes next to the tags you consider relevant or enter your own tags in the field below.
(2)

Your tags: Add your first tag
 
Help others find this product — tag it for Amazon search
No one has tagged this product for Amazon search yet. Why not be the first to suggest a search for which it should appear?

 

Customer Reviews

5 Reviews
5 star:    (0)
4 star:
 (4)
3 star:    (0)
2 star:
 (1)
1 star:    (0)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
3.6 out of 5 stars (5 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
Share your thoughts with other customers:
Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Fresh T-Bone, May 14, 2008
By William Merrill "eclecticist" (San Antonio, TX United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)      
The fact that these new T-Bone Burnett tunes were originally written for a play had me concerned at first. ("The Knee Plays," anyone?) But once I listened to the music, I got into it. The CD stands very well on its own without any connection to Sam Shepard's play, and every song's a keeper. You've got the Twin Peaks-ish "Dope Island," the occasional taste of blues such as "Sweet Lullaby," and a variety of other styles in between. As you might expect from producer extraordinaire Burnett, the musicians playing with T-Bone are impressive people like Jon Brion and Marc Ribot, plus his ex-wife Sam Phillips. (I'm a big fan of hers too.) The duets between Sam & T-Bone on "Dope Island" are marvelous, and she even sings lead vocals here and there. By the way, the title of this album reminded me of Burnett's "Truth Decay," except in reverse, right?
Comment Comments (5) | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)



 
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Worth The Listening Effort, June 22, 2008
By Cynth B. "Poet Warrior" (Central Coast, CA USA) - See all my reviews
When I first heard Tooth of Crime, I was not in the proper frame of mind to actually appreciate it. Before hunkering down to seriously consider it's complexities, I needed to have an open mind and a strong constitution. But that's just me. After all, there is a lot of darkness to ponder as well as some devastatingly dark humor that could rub a person the wrong way.

And I think that it was T Bone Burnett's intention to create something that could rub the listener the "wrong way" in that it is difficult to listen to if all you want is a panacea to the world's ills. Sorry, but our societal ills call for a more homeopathic musical remedy than mere emotional sleight-of-hand and pleasant distraction.

The songs on Tooth of Crime are what performance artist Laurie Anderson once called "difficult listening music". To attach this term to Tooth of Crime is actually a compliment from my perspective. I know another reviewer made a negative aside to David Byrne's "Knee Plays", but since I love that album I cannot share that sentiment. In fact, on many of the tracks the horns remind me considerably of that 80s bit of theatrical soundtracking. However, Burnett's lyrics are much more dark and complex than Byrne's abstract absurdism. I can appreciate both for different reasons, and to be honest I would rather not go into comparing applejack to orangeade.

Going back to Tooth of Crime, for me these tracks have felt like emotional grindcore with a subtext of sadomasochism that adds to the depths of depravity exposed by Burnett's lyrics. I am thinking of his song, "Kill Zone", specifically these words: For I'll steal your dreams while you are sleeping / And sell them for dust and cheap lust / And I'll slit your hope while you are weeping / And wipe the blade clean with morphine / Be my queen."

This is a dark ride on the other side of the spectrum from false cultural "feel-good" tropes. And this is to be embraced as such. To hope for something else from Burnett at this stage in his musical development would be to hope for a lie. It is refreshing to hear the work of someone who does not consider personal struggle as anathema to life. While it may be disquieting for many to hear the combination of music and lyrics contained within Tooth of Crime, perhaps we need to be disquieted at what we have allowed our culture to become: a worthless landscape filled with American Idol worship.

What I hear Burnett saying in this album is that it's high time we melted down the Golden Calf we have created and accept the lessons we have yet to learn.

Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)



 
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars T Bone's albums are always keepers, June 2, 2008
By Gaylen Halbert (Weimar, California United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
T Bone's albums are an investment that produce satisfaction on initial listening and reward again in the future. They just don't go stale--- e.g. TRUTH DECAY which can sit on my shelf for many months and then sound great again. T bone has established his status as a producer and his own music is adult rock at its very best. I am also a fan of Sam Phillips who makes an appreciated contribution to TOOTH OF CRIME.
Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)


Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
 
 
 
Most Recent Customer Reviews

2.0 out of 5 stars Tooth of Grime
T Bone Burnett has always threatened to descend into rubbish and pretension. With this outing, that descent is finally complete. Read more
Published 4 months ago by Micky

4.0 out of 5 stars T Bone Burnett is a Keeper!
I have been listening to T Bone Burnett for years and it's been a long time since he's put out an album. Read more
Published 9 months ago by Lynn Ellingwood

Only search this product's reviews



Customer Discussions

 Beta (What's this?)
New! See all customer communities, and bookmark your communities to keep track of them.
This product's forum (0 discussions)
  Discussion Replies Latest Post
  No discussions yet

Ask questions, Share opinions, Gain insight
Start a new discussion
Topic:
First post:
Prompts for sign-in
  [Cancel]


   


SoundUnwound Says...

Learn more about Tooth of Crime opens new browser window by T-Bone Burnett opens new browser window

Go explore the super-connected music universe at SoundUnwound.com opens new browser window - the new music site from IMDb and Amazon.

SoundUnwound Logo

What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?

Tooth of Crime
65% buy the item featured on this page:
Tooth of Crime 3.6 out of 5 stars (5)
$18.98
Twenty Twenty - The Essential T Bone Burnett
17% buy
Twenty Twenty - The Essential T Bone Burnett 3.5 out of 5 stars (27)
$15.98
Don't Do Anything
6% buy
Don't Do Anything 3.9 out of 5 stars (23)
$18.98
The True False Identity
6% buy
The True False Identity 4.0 out of 5 stars (19)
$7.98



Look for Similar Items by Category


Music You Should Hear™: Artists' Picks

Music You Should Hear
Want to know what Norah Jones, Sting, and Il Divo are listening to? Find out in Music You Should Hear™, where these and other artists tell you about the music they love.
 

Down to the Nuts and Bolts

Shop for Sockets and Socket Sets
Get to those hard-to-reach nuts and bolts with a huge selection of sockets and socket sets.

Shop all sockets and socket sets

 
Music Essentials
Greats from the Greatest Explore our Music Essentials Store and find music from over 500 essential artists and composers, watch videos, and vote for the most essential artist.
 
Read Our Blog
For more about music, check out ChordStrike, a minor blog for major music lovers™.
 

 

Feedback

If you need help or have a question for Customer Service, contact us.
 Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
Is there any other feedback you would like to provide?

Your comments can help make our site better for everyone.


Where's My Stuff?

Shipping & Returns

Need Help?

Your Recent History

  (What's this?)
You have no recently viewed items or searches.

After viewing product detail pages or search results, look here to find an easy way to navigate back to pages you are interested in.

Look to the right column to find helpful suggestions for your shopping session.

Continue shopping: Top Sellers

Conditions of Use | Privacy Notice © 1996-2009, Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates