Tom Waits Alice

ALICE

"But I must be insane
To go skating on your name
And by tracing it twice
I fell through the ice
Of Alice
There's only Alice"
(Alice)

Alice is one of the most distinctive of all Waits' creations, occupying its own corner in the odd-angled room that is Tom Waits' body of work. While there are the familiar parts--the redoubtable ragged voice, jazz ballads and poignant musings on death and longing--the whole is strange and exotic.

A devastatingly beautiful atmosphere made of sorrow and reverie, insanity and resignation, rises like a mist in Alice. It's a lyrical melancholia, a feeling that creeps in on the arms of Stroh violins and unabashed poetry. These are songs to fall into, and sometimes, to keep falling. There are fragile, haunted musings, and laments, mad ruminations, and tales of unrequited love and anthems from beyond the grave.

"Alice," said Waits, "is adult songs for children, or children's songs for adults. It's a maelstrom or fever-dream, a tone poem, with torch songs and waltzes...an odyssey in dream logic and nonsense."

"The ground is drinking a slow faucet leak
Your house is so soft and fading
As it soaks the black summer heat a light goes
On and a door opens
And a yellow cat runs out on the stream of hall light and into the yard
A wooden cherry scent is faintly breathing the air"
(Watch Her Disappear)

It's an odyssey he and Kathleen Brennan created together, in what is becoming one of the epic collaborations in music, going on over twenty years now.

"Kathleen is my Alice," said Waits. "We met on New Year's Eve, 1980. We used to play a game called 'Let's Go Get Lost.' She'd say 'turn here, turn here...until we were lost. It's kind of like writing songs together. In the studio, Kathleen will submerge herself in seven newspapers and a novel, and then at just the right time she'll raise her head and make a remark that will become the eyes and ears of the song. Will and Ariel Durant said, 'A book is like a quarrel. One word leads to another and may erupt irrevocably in blood or ink.' That's kind of like me and Kathleen writing. When we're totally lost, we know we have something."

Alice, once dubbed "the lost Tom Waits masterpiece" by the press, was originally done as an avant-garde opera directed by Robert Wilson for Hamburg's Thalia Theater in the winter of 1992. "Alice" was based loosely on Lewis Carroll's obsession with young Alice Liddell, the girl who inspired his Alice in Wonderland and Through The Looking Glass.

Working with Brennan, they wrote fifteen songs for the Wilson opera in the summer of 1992. The Thalia performed "Alice" for eighteen months, with an eclectic orchestra of Waits' design, but the composers did not record the songs until last summer (along with his forthcoming simultaneous new release, Blood Money).

"Songs are joining the dream of the listener, and completing a circuit that is really entirely your own," said Waits. These songs are unsure footsteps, in a strange house, in the dark.

"And you'll die with the rose still on your lips
And in time the heart-shaped bone
That was your hips
And all the worms they will climb
The rugged ladder of your spine
We're all mad here"
(We're All Mad Here)

Alice uses fantasy, exotic characters and images to evoke a man's inner world of loss and longing. The album opens with a haunting, smoky ode to "Alice" ("And so a secret kiss/Brings madness with the bliss...") then departs on a tour of the unlikely and seldom seen. The titles are like signposts to half-remembered dreams: "No One Knows I'm Gone," "Everything You Can Think," "Lost in the Harbour," "We're All Mad Here." Lyrics arrest, amuse, and transport. With "Barcarole" the album ends where it began: longing for what can never be. The song is a waltzing reverie with a musical fugue in its instrumental break that sounds like a cat walking on a piano.

"And I belong only to you
The water is filling my shoes
In the wine of my heart there's a stone
In a well made of bone
I will bring to the pond
And she's here in your pocket
And curled up in a dollar
And the chain from your watch
Around her neck
And I'll stay right here till it's time"
(Barcarole)

Bass saxophones, vibes, pump organ, French horns and a string trio of bass, violin and cello are arranged and played in ways uncommon to other Waits' recordings.

"The rain makes such a lovely sound
To those who are six feet under ground"
(No One Knows I'm Gone)

The musicians include: Dawn Harms, playing the Stroh, a violin affixed with a brass horn first devised so as to enable entire orchestra string sections to hold their own against brass: Matt Brubeck on cello; Larry Taylor on upright bass; Bebe Risenfors also on Stroh violin, plus viola, bass clarinet, marimba and clarinet; Carla Kihlstedt on violin, Colin Stetson on alto, tenor and baritone saxophone and clarinet; Ara Anderson on trumpet and baritone horn; Nic Phelps on French horn and trumpet; and Waits on piano, pump organ, Mellotron and Chamberlain vibes. "Table Top Joe" features a guest appearance by Stewart Copeland on drums with a piano solo by Bent Clausen.

When asked about the uncharacteristic arrangements, Waits said, "During the '70's, too many of my songs were drowning in strings. I didn't want to hear another blasted violin. So, we found string players who felt the same way about their instrument, formed an odd, skeletal chamber orchestra and tried to avoid all the old familiar phrases where strings love to play."

Lyrically and musically, the songs are part of a cycle where each song relates to what comes before and what will follow, as you listen, Alice is a puzzle that reveals as it unravels and makes a bold step forward for Waits.

Show liner notes ...