With something like a century of writing, recording and performing their own takes on the blues between them, a collaboration between John Hammond and Tom Waits ought surely to resonate with a timeless, evocative sense of rootsy melancholy. And 'Wicked Grin', wherein Hammond, the veteran white blues singer with a voice blacker than coal, sings a selection of Waits' eccentric swamp-fever ballads and bayou pot-boilers, is as elemental and authentic as might have been expected.
Since becoming a cult figure first via his '70s releases on the aptly named Asylum label and then with his blistering Island Records trilogy the following decade ('Swordfishtrombones', 'Rain Dogs' and 'Frank's Wild Years'), Tom Waits has carved a singular reputation. With Rod Stewart derailing his 'Downtown Train', and Bruce Springsteen turning the guttersnipe despair of 'Jersey Girl' into a show-closing, home-hymning anthem, it seemed nobody other than Waits himself could properly perform his acerbic songs.
But in Hammond he has found a worthy collaborator, one who gets to the heart of what these strange lyrics are actually about and imbues their sharp angles, acute observations and nicotine-stained introspection with some real insight and understanding.
The key track, in this regard, seems to be 'Shore Leave', one of Waits more abstract pieces on record, but turned by Hammond into the lament it cries out to be. 'Jockey Full Of Bourbon' finds its Mexican flavours brought out with extra spice, while 'Get Behind The Mule' is disturbed, wired, unearthly.
Waits' original version of 'Murder In The Red Barn' is up there with the Violent Femmes' 'Country Death Song' as one of the most spooked moments in the last 30 years of recorded music, and here Hammond emphasises the lyric with a sparse, almost jaunty arrangement and a matter-of-fact delivery that wouldn't sound out of place on a record by his present labelmate, John Lee Hooker.
'Big Black Mariah' and '16 Shells From A Thirty-Ought Six' are probably the only slight disappointments here, both treatments failing to add much to Waits' patented drunken stomp. But when things ain't broke, there's little point trying to fix 'em. For devotees of the 'Bone Machine' man, aficionados of the blues and anyone else wanting to keep their fingers on the pulse of Americana, then, this is unhesitatingly recommended. The rest of you should hear it, too.
by Angus Batey