ARTiST: T-Bone Burnett
ALBUM: Tooth Of Crime
BiTRATE: 172kbps avg
QUALiTY: EAC Secure Mode / LAME 3.97 Final / -V2 --vbr-new / 44.100Khz
LABEL: Nonesuch
GENRE: Rock
SiZE: 51.80 megs
PLAYTiME: 0h 39min 23sec total
RiP DATE: 2008-05-09
STORE DATE: 2008-05-09
Track List:
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01. Anything I Say Can And Will Be 4:02
Used Against You
02. Dope Island 4:16
03. The Slowdown 4:43
04. Blind Man 1:22
05. Kill Zone 4:19
06. The Rat Age 5:30
07. Swizzle Stick 5:10
08. Telepresence (Make The Metal 3:05
Scream)
09. Here Come The Philistines 3:33
10. Sweet Lullaby 3:23
Release Notes:
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Despite the competing claims of such as Mark Ronson and Brian (Danger Mouse)
Burton, T Bone Burnett may be the most interesting producer working in popular
music at the moment. Equally comfortable helming award-winning soundtracks for
Cold Mountain, O Brother, Where Art Thou? and Walk the Line, and reacquainting
singers like Tony Bennett, Roy Orbison, Cassandra Wilson and kd lang with their
roots, his manifold talents combined to powerful effect on last year's peerless
Raising Sand collaboration between Robert Plant and Alison Krauss. But until
2006's The True False Identity, his packed diary left Burnett little time to
pursue his own muse.
Most of the songs on Tooth of Crime were written at the request of Sam Shepard,
for a 1996 musical production of his 1972 play of the same name, and have been
reworked and added to through the intervening years. He describes Shepard's
original play as involving "zones of fame" in which people can become
celebrities, without anyone outside that zone being aware of them. On Burnett's
album, these zones are transformed into a series of tableaux depicting the
various failings and frustrations of our times, from single-issue themes like
drugs ("Dope Island") and media ("Telepresence") to the more generalised
complaints of a track such as "The Rat Age", in which ghostly echoes of
tambourine and twang, and the subdued lowing of mournful horns, accompany
Burnett's declamation concerning the shifting moralities of an increasingly
dystopian culture: "We welcomed the genetic code/ And left it bleeding by the
road."
It's a format that enables Burnett to adopt a variety of personae, from the
confused suitor of "Kill Zone" wondering "Can we untangle guilt and innocence?/
How hard we torture this ambivalence", to the devilish protagonist of "Anything
I Say Can and Will Be Used Against You" spreading his virus of temptation: "I
will disengage your mastery/ Until all you love is blasphemy". The latter boasts
of having a "torture chamber orchestra", here employed furnishing a predatory
jazz-noir backdrop that's equal parts Barry Adamson and Tom Waits.
The arrangements possess great depth and diverse character, which almost makes
up for Burnett's reluctance to sing, rather than narrate. But if one discards
such vocal expectations, and treats Tooth of Crime like an update of the
jazz'n'poetry format, its abundant pleasures become apparent.