7 / 10
'Blood Money', the second of Tom Waits’ new-born pair, is the darker twin.
Written for and inspired by 'Woyzeck' – the play he wrote two years ago for a Copenhagen theatre – it is mean.
Starting with 'Misery Is The River Of The World', ‘Blood Money’ carries the hard-wheezing, malevolent echoes of 'Bone Machine' – his grinding, frightening 1992 epic – through to its close. These songs, Tom Waits
says, are his musical dispatches from the dark, human carnival of life. He is not a man easily scared of the dark.
Despite few moments of respite (‘Coney Island Baby’), ‘Blood Money’ is still a cacophonous, fearsome and shadowy delight.
Paul McNamee
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