The Black Rider

Working with two challenging avant-garde artists, avant-garde theater director Robert Wilson and novelist Williams S. Burroughs, Tom Waits could only add to the stakes of high weirdness. Waits’ music had been growing progressively darker and stranger with every release for years. This next challenge, to marry his musical vision with their skewered concepts and story, led to an album that is among the most difficult in the Waits’ canon. Its sound is dense, a Phil Spector Wall of Sound where the walls have come from the horror movie factory with eyeballs looking back and scrutinizing every move. Not that one expects accessibility from a Tom Waits recording, but these are eerie, extreme tone poems. For those drawn to dark moments, the effects are greatly satisfying. “Black Box Theme” creaks past with a slow, morbid crawl that sounds as if it were recorded centuries ago, while “’T’ain’t No Sin” with William Burroughs narrating and Greg Cohen offering off-kilter bass clarinet emits from a room somewhere in the back of an old house. The songs flow into one another, creating extended dreamlike sequences. Not for everyone, but extremely satisfying for those looking to escape alongside a foggy sea with little light or land in sight.