April 27, 1999 by A.S. Van Dorston

“My little girl just loves your music. She puts you right up there with cherry bombs and clowns” read a fan letter to Tom Waits. Isn’t that the way it should be, all the children of middle-aged hipsters loving Tom Waits? Yet as the long anticipated release date approached, people still respond to the name of the beatnik-hobo-avant garde-junkyard-cabaret troubadour with a, “Tom who?” Despite his failure to become a household name, he did remarkably well in being absorbed into the public consciousness (Nick Cave, PJ Harvey, Beck all paying homage).. Especially as he dropped out for six years, settling down to a rural homelife with a wife and a bunch of screaming children.

Mule Variations is a more accessible album compared to the dark, theatrical Black Rider and brilliantly jagged Bone Machine, with the welcome return of his heartwrenching maudlin ballads, “Take It With Me” and “Hold On.” Some of the songs here sound familiar, like re-writes from Swordfishtrombones and Rain Dogs. This doesn’t make it a lesser album however. With the added spice of age, experience, a finely tuned taste for found sounds and the dirt and worms in the outdoor shack he recorded in, this is one of his best batches yet. He reunites with Joe Gore and Marc Ribot who contribute their gritty, spiky post-Beefheart guitar playing. The use of dobro, harp, pump organ, horns and reeds give the record the classic earthy Waits sound. That is, rich with alternatively horrifying and humorous imagery, such as a lurching, drunken carny pushing a lopsided ice cream cart containing empty, rattling whiskey bottles and a dead monkey. DJ M. Mark “The III Media” Retiman contributes samples that are subtly integrated throughout the album, but reminds you that it is indeed 1999.

Not to be forgotten is the important contribution of his wife, playwrite Kathleen Brennan, who first helped revitalize his career with assistance on Swordfishtrombones. In a recent interview he commented, “I’m the prospector, she’s the cook. I bring home the flamingo, she beheads it; I drop it in the water, she takes off the feathers . . ..no-one wants to eat it.” Mule Variations is a 70-minute feast big enough to choke a horse, and it’s delicious. On the last song, Waits asks, “Does life seem nasty, brutish and short? Come on up to the house” sit down, eat up and have some fun with the Waits family.