Alice

It’s a herculean task to make sense of a single Tom Waits album—now the grizzled son of a bitch goes and drops two at the same time. Alice is the more immediately accessible of the pair, a sort of down-and-out vaudeville musical: Think Rodgers & Hammerstein getting rolled for loose change. Guided by an ambling assemblage of horns, strings, piano, and various exotic instruments, Alice is thick with ballads both startlingly catchy (“Barcarolle”) and supremely fucked-up (“Poor Edward”). Waits’ leathery growl is in top form throughout, bringing an odd nobility to even the most degenerate tales.