Description
Tom Waits wrote a song called "Frank's Wild Years" for his 1983 Swordfishtrombones album, then used the title (minus its apostrophe) for a musical play he wrote with his wife, Kathleen Brennan, and toured with in 1986. The Franks Wild Years album, drawn from the show, is subtitled, "un operachi romantico in two acts," though the songs themselves do not carry the plot. Rather, this is just the third installment in Waits' eccentric series of Island Records albums in which he seems most inspired by German art song and carnival music, presenting songs in spare, stripped-down arrangements consisting of instruments like marimba, baritone horn, and pump organ and singing in a strained voice that has been artificially compressed and distorted. The songs themselves often are conventional romantic vignettes, or would be minus the oddities of instrumentation, arrangement, and performance. For example, "Innocent When You Dream," a song of disappointment in love and friendship, has a winning melody, but it is played in a seesaw arrangement of pump organ, bass, violin, and piano, and Waits sings it like an enraged drunk. (He points out the arbitrary nature of the arrangements by repeating "Straight to the Top," done as a demented rhumba in act one, as a Vegas-style Frank Sinatra swing tune in act two.) The result on record may not be theatrical, exactly, but it certainly is affected. It also has the quality of an inside joke that listeners are not being let in on.
Product Details
- Artist
- Tom Waits
- Original year of release
- 1987
- Label / Studio
- POL
- Year of release
- 1989
- Media Content Format
- Album
- Media Format
- Audio CD
- Recording Environment
- Studio
- Number of Discs
- 1
- Run Time (minutes)
- 55
- Cast & Crew
- Tom Waits (Music Performer)
- Tom Waits (Producer)
- Biff Dawes (Sound Engineer)
- Danny Leake (Sound Engineer)
Press Reviews
Ranked #57 in AP's list of the `Top 99 Of '85-'95' - "...Tom Waits at his rosiest....The best part about FRANKS is that it [is] no rock record. It's truly a musical with Waits' avant, freakish touch, including the hitting of some off-color notes and Victrola-like warbles to add a touch of dementia to the mix... Alternative Press (7/95, p.91)
4 Stars - Excellent - "...Sad, delirious, soused and bedraggled by turns...tapped into a timeless wellspring of emotion, illuminating situations you never realized you'd experienced... Q (10/92, p.101)
Tracklisting
Disc 1:
-
Hang On St. Christopher
-
Straight to the Top
-
Blow Wind Blow
-
Temptation
-
Innocent When You Dream (Barroom)
-
I'll Be Gone
-
Yesterday Is Here
-
Please Wake Me Up
-
Frank's Theme
-
More Than Rain
-
Way Down in the Hole
-
Straight to the Top (Vegas)
-
I'll Take New York
-
Telephone Call from Istanbul
-
Cold Cold Ground
-
Train Song
-
Innocent When You Dream (78)
