Tom Waits – Brawlers LP (Remastered)

Brawlers presents probably the best-known of Tom Waits' personalities, filled as it is with vocal cord damage, found percussion, old-timey arrangements, and cartoon-buzz lead guitar. It's also the disc that flirts most dangerously with cliché, filled as it is with his well-trod inventory of Americana underbelly images: trains, jailhouses, barrooms, etc. However, the secret of Waits' act is how well he deploys these should-be-tired cultural touchstones; at the very least, he sounds more comfortable in the role of a boxcar-hopper than he does reciting the ripped-from-the-headlines Middle East folk song "Road to Peace". Certainly it helps that he continues to buck the aging rocker career trend of increasing cleanliness, wrapping these songs in dirt-grit production that keeps the Big Bopper warble of "Lie to Me" or the garage 12-bar Ramones cover "The Return of Jackie and Judy" from sounding like a House of Blues exhibit.

TRACK LISTING
- Disc 1 -
1 Lie to Me (Remastered)
2 Lowdown (Remastered)
3 2:19 (Remastered)
4 Fish in the Jailhouse (Remastered)
- Disc 2 -
5 Bottom of the World (Remastered)
6 Lucinda (Remastered)
7 Ain't Goin' Down to the Well (Remastered)
8 Lord I've Been Changed (Remastered)
- Disc 3 -
9 Puttin' on the Dog (Remastered)
10 Road to Peace (Remastered)
11 All the Time (Remastered)
- Disc 4 -
12 The Return of Jackie and Judy (Remastered)
13 Walk Away (Remastered)
14 Sea of Love (Remastered)
15 Buzz Fledderjohn (Remastered)
16 Rains on Me (Remastered)