Features
Thursday, December 15 2011
The Best Alternative Songwriters of 2011
Some of 2011's best songwriting came from artists whose work could be broadly defined as "alternative". Few of these artists fit the mold of the traditional singer-songwriter, creating music the blurs the lines defining genres.
Thursday, December 17 2009
The Best Live Albums of 2009
This has been a year teeming with one of the most robust outputs of live recordings in recent memory.
Wednesday, September 2 2009
Who Are You: Tom Waits and ‘Lowside of the Road’ by Barney Hoskyns
Waits is a deconstructionist vaudevillian with a heart who rails against cynicism; a furious bluesman blaring unabashedly about the soul-- his words and music stretch into a bizarre land, where the light is slanted, eerie.
Wednesday, July 30 2008
The Innovators
Sometimes changing the course of modern music can be surprisingly easy. Though their names may not be laced in the stars right next to Sinatra and Dylan, these mavericks will always be remembered for breaking boundaries, stretching the definitions of genres, and rewriting what the very notion of a "pop song" is.
Saturday, December 23 2006
Best Albums of 2006
At long last, the annual rite of passage, the "best of" list... Here's PopMatters picks for the best 60 records of 2006.
Reviews
Wednesday, October 26 2011
Tom Waits: Bad As Me
Bad As Me is a bracing, defiant attack against things as usual. Its clash and clatter are combative, but in the end -- and here's what throws the suits off -- utterly beautiful.
Monday, August 1 2011
'Tom Waits on Tom Waits' Doesn't So Much Pull Its Subject in from the Shadows as Follow Him There
Much more than a poet of the streets, Tom Waits is the dharma bum who can transmute down at the heels grotesqueries into the lyrical and even the spiritually fecund.
Monday, December 7 2009
Tom Waits: Glitter and Doom Live
The idiosyncrasy with which the long-revered songwriter has built his legacy on transpires just as fascinatingly through a live venue as it does on his studio records.
Wednesday, December 6 2006
Tom Waits: Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers and Bastards
If you hear the phrases, 'The female praying mantis devours the male while they are mating. The male sometimes continues copulating even after the female has bitten off his head, and part of his upper torso,' you are listening to a Bastard.
Blogs
Wednesday, April 22 2009
Tom Waits - "Mule Variations" Video Collection (video)
10 years ago this week: Tom Waits returns with his first record since 1992 with the critically acclaimed album Mule Variations that quite impressively goes…
News
Friday, August 5 2011
The wit and wisdom of Tom Waits
Tom Waits doesn't exactly approach an interview as opportunity for self-disclosure. He's more the hepcat who likes to play with the interviewing mouse. Still, his…
Friday, November 17 2006
The always-eccentric Tom Waits hopes you'll adopt his 'Orphans'
About halfway through an hour-long conversation on phone lines that occasionally crack and fizzle as if they are being gnawed, the talk turns to moles.…
