01	Alice						04:28
	02	Everything You Can Think						03:10
	03	Flower's Grave						03:28
	04	No One Knows I'm Gone						01:42
	05	Kommienezuspadt						03:10
	06	Poor Edward						03:42
	07	Table Top Joe						04:14
	08	Lost In The Harbour						03:45
	09	We're All Mad Here						02:31
	10	Watch Her Disappear						02:33
	11	Reeperbahn						04:02
	12	I'm Still Here						01:49
	13	Fish And Bird						03:59
	14	Barcarolle						03:59
	15	Fawn						01:43

Alice, 2002
(P) & c 2002 Anti Inc. 6632-2
c 1992 Jalma Music (ASCAP)
All songs/ production: Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan

Tom Waits: Vocal/ Piano (Alice, Poor Edward, I'm Still Here), Vocal/ Mellotron/ Chamberlain Vibes/ Pod (Everything You Can Think), Vocals/ Piano/ Pump Organ (Flower's Grave), Vocal/ Pump Organ (No One Knows I'm Gone, Table Top Joe, Lost In The Harbour, Watch Her Disappear), Vocals/ Pod/ Stomp (Kommienezuspadt), Vocal/ Piano/ Circular Violin (We're All Mad Here), Vocal/ Piano/ Chamberlain (Reeperbahn), Vocal/ Piano/ Toy Glockenspiel/ Pump Organ (Fish & Bird), Vocal/ Piano/ Chamberlain Vibes, Cymbals (Barcarolle), Piano (Fawn)
Eric Perney: Bass (Alice)
Colin Stetson: Sax (Alice, Barcarolle), Baritone Sax (Kommienezuspadt), Bass Clarinet (We're All Mad Here, Reeperbahn, Fawn), Clarinet (I'm Still Here)
Gino Robair: Drums (Alice), Percussion (We're All Mad Here, Reeperbahn), Marimba (Fawn)
Ara Anderson: Muted Trumpet (Alice), Baritone Horn (Reeperbahn), Trumpet/ Baritone Horn (Fish & Bird)
Larry Taylor: Bass, Electric Guitar (Everything You Can Think), Bass (Flower's Grave, No One Knows I'm Gone, Poor Edward, Lost In The Harbour, Fish & Bird), Bass/ Acoustic Guitar/ Percussion (Kommienezuspadt), Bass, Acoustic Guitar (Table Top Joe)
Matt Brubeck: Cello (Everything You Can Think, Flower's Grave, No One Knows I'm Gone, Kommienezuspadt, Poor Edward, Lost In The Harbour, Watch Her Disappear, I'm Still Here, Fish & Bird), Bass (Barcarolle)
Bent Clausen: Swiss Hand Bells (Everything You Can Think), Piano (Table Top Joe), Piano Solo (Barcarolle)
Bebe Risenfors: Stroh Violin (Everything You Can Think), Alto Viola/ Clarinet (Flower's Grave), Alto Viola (No One Knows I'm Gone), Baby Bass/ Marimba/ Bass Clarinet, Percussion (Kommienezuspadt), Viola (Poor Edward), Baby Bass (Table Top Joe), Fiddle (Lost In The Harbour), Clarinet (Fish & Bird)
Nik Phelps: French Horn, Trumpet (Everything You Can Think)
Dawn Harms: Violin (Flower's Grave, Watch Her Disappear, I'm Still Here, Barcarolle), Stroh Violin/ Violin (No One Knows I'm Gone, Fish & Bird), Stroh Violin (Poor Edward, Lost In The Harbour)
Andrew Borger: Oil Drums/ Frame Drum/ Percussion (Kommienezuspadt)
Tim Allen: Scraper (Kommienezuspadt)
Stewart Copeland: Trap Kit (Table Top Joe)
Joe Gore: Electric Guitar (Table Top Joe)
Carla Kihlstedt: Violin (Lost In The Harbour, We're All Mad Here, Reeperbahn, Fawn)
Gerd Bessler: Recording (Lost In The Harbour)
Matthew Sperry: Bass (We're All Mad Here, Reeperbahn, Barcarolle, Fawn)
Myles Boisen: Banjo (Reeperbahn)
Oz Fritz: recording and mixing (The Pocket Studio, Forestville, CA. Studio support: Richard Fisher)
Jacquire King: Mixing (Flower's Grave, Lost In The Harbour), Recording (I'm Still Here, Barcarolle)
Jeff Sloan: Second Engineer, Production Coordinator
Julianne Deery: Production Coordinator
Heather Fremling: cheques & balances
Doug Sax: mastering at The Mastering Lab, Hollywood, CA
Jeff Abarta: A&R and Art Direction
Matt Mahurin: Photography and Concept
Ralfinoe: Design



ALICE

Year Of Release: 2002
Record rating = 8
Overall rating = 11

How many times is it possible to combine Kurt Weill with beat poetry and still end up with something so deeply emotional?
Best song: REEPERBAHN

Track listing: 1) Alice; 2) Everything You Can Think; 3) Flower's Grave; 4) No One Knows I'm Gone; 5) Kommienezuspadt; 6) Poor Edward; 7) Table Top Joe; 8) Lost In The Harbor; 9) We're All Mad Here; 10) Watch Her Disappear; 11) Reeperbahn; 12) I'm Still Here; 13) Fish & Bird; 14) Barcarolle; 15) Fawn.

Perhaps Tom's decision to release two different albums on the very same day of the very same month and year won't come off as all that unpredictable considering that both are actually sort of "side projects", based on two different stage shows that Tom projected with Robert Wilson. Thus, the grand tradition of Franks Wild Years and The Black Rider is renewed and prolonged, and Waits can continue to demonstrate us his obsessed preoccupation with theatre, cabaret, music hall, and German vaudeville for as long as he cares.
In this way, considering that both projects weren't specially "LP-oriented", perhaps it would be unjust and useless to accuse Tom of not only not 'progressing', but not even trying to progress with these records. There's pretty much not a single truly unpredictable, previously unheard-of innovation on Alice; in fact, it's seriously formulaic even at its best. However, it is somewhat unexpected in that it's Tom's most sentimental, emotionally rich and overall "listenable" album since at least the already mentioned Franks Wild Years, which it in some ways emulates. In fact, anybody who can get over Tom's earth-rumbling voice will probably appreciate at least some of the songs - they're pretty conventional.
It's a husky, gloomy, loungey cabaret album this one. Dark as usual, too, and Tom's photo in the inside sleeve is even more zombie-like than the one on Mule Variations, if such a thing as possible; I hope he doesn't look that way in real life, he'd have to be living in a graveyard or somewhere like that to match the appearance. Anyway, there are brass sections, strings, cheap pianos, sordid production, not a guitar in sight, this is Tom paying tribute to the German musical scene again, even if apparently the stage show in question was dedicated to 'Alice' - as in 'Alice Liddell', the prototype for Lewis Carroll's Alice. It doesn't (and isn't meant to) translate well onto the record, though. The record just has an "Alice" on it and that's that, and it's been already supposed that the whole album is actually just an open-hearted love letter from Tom to his trusty supporting better side (even if all of the songs are actually credited to both Tom and Kathleen Brennan, which is a pretty dang strong argument against that hypothesis).
Critics have all been raving about the record - I will start by going a little bit against the grain and saying that, unless you're a real Tom Waits diehard who wets his or her underwear at the very sound of his voice, or, on the contrary, an absolute Tom Waits neophyte, these songs probably won't strike you as exceptional. Very few of the ballads are memorable at all: they're slow, lazy, and pretty much all build on feeling and devotion where earlier they used to also build on blistering vocal melodies ('Yesterday Is Here', anyone?). If mood and interesting lyrics aren't enough for you, well, there's the danger of being bored. For a couple of minutes here and there, I was, too. But the man simply has such a terrifically strong aura around him and his musical doings that even when you're bored, you can't really condemn the things he's doing. Listen to, I dunno, something like 'Poor Edward'. It's got a pretty generic Twenties-style melody, with a gypsy fiddle playing one simple pattern over and over, and no vocal hook for miles around. But the very fact that, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, Tom Waits is still willing to go back eighty years, resuscitate a genre that's more or less thought of as dead and gone, and use it as a polygon for a truly heartfelt lyrical performance, is goddamn seducing. Career highlight? God no. But it works all the same.
Actually, out of the ballads only a few do strike me as highlights - the croaky squeaky intentionally-bad produced title track acts as the perfect mood-setter, a song so heavily soaked in nostalgia, old age depression, warm memories and cold realization of the present it's difficult not to forgive it for lack of memorability; the typically Waits-style half-sentimental, half-deadly-cynical 'Flower's Grave'; and the epic, stately tale of 'Fish And Bird', which, for some reason, is the only track that actually does remind me of Seventies' Waits - maybe because it's so dang straightforward even for the usual Alice level (and yeah, the album earned many comparisons with the stuff that Tom was releasing before he went mad in 1983, but I think it is much darker, gruffer, and, well, weirder than anything from that relatively "mentally stable" period anyway).
Anyway, what really helps the record get by smoothly is that the endless string of ballads - obviously the focal point - is frequently interrupted by 'breathers', i.e. more upbeat songs that alleviate the possible boredom factor. And they're just as good... and sometimes better. The most outstanding of all is the grossly titled (and grossly sung) 'Kommienezuspadt', which is somewhere half in between a silly goof of an old comic geezer and a sly parody on German cabaret music in general, with Tom spitting out pseudo-German nonsense in his most "poisonous" style. For the weak-hearted in the audience, there's a pretty little jazz-pop number called 'Table Top Joe', and for those who love Tom Waits for the 'puh puh puh puh' vocal style and the marimbas, there's the Swordfishtrombones-style 'We're All Mad Here'. Me, I like when the German, the jazz, and the madness are all joined together, and that's what happens on 'Reeperbahn' (well, okay, it's not exactly mad, but it's sure madder than 'Flower's Grave', and besides, I needed a good stylistic flourish here).
But actually, while I did - somewhat arbitrarily, I confess - select 'Reeperbahn' as best track here, in a certain way the best track might just be that little 'Fawn' bit of instrumental beauty that closes the album. The harp-and-musical-saw interplay (unless that's a violin, but it sounds tremendously similar to a musical saw anyway) says in its minute-and-a-half pretty much everything that the album was saying over the preceding fourty five. Or, well, okay, at least it says the main thing - that utter beauty can be obtainable with the minimal effort if you got enough of that beauty in your soul. There. Did that make a grand review closing figure or what? You can send word to Dave Marsh he's retired now.