It's been long time since Tom Waits recorded an album as saturated with tenderness as this one. The carny-barker noise merchant who has immersed himself in brokenness and reportage from life's seamy, even hideous underbelly for decades has created, along with songwriting and life partner Kathleen Brennan, a love song cycle so moving and poetic that it's almost unbearable to take in one sitting. Alice is alleged to be the "great lost Waits masterpiece. Read Full BioIt's been long time since Tom Waits recorded an album as saturated with tenderness as this one. The carny-barker noise merchant who has immersed himself in brokenness and reportage from life's seamy, even hideous underbelly for decades has created, along with songwriting and life partner Kathleen Brennan, a love song cycle so moving and poetic that it's almost unbearable to take in one sitting. Alice is alleged to be the "great lost Waits masterpiece." Waits and Brennan collaborated with Robert Wilson on a stage production loosely based on Alice Liddell, the young girl who was the obsession and muse of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland books. The show ran in Europe for a time and the production's 15 songs were left unrecorded until now. Alice forgoes the usual nightmare lyric sequences, warped, circus-like melodies, and sonic darknesses that have been part and parcel of Waits' work since Swordfishtrombones. Instead, this song cycle is, for the most part, steeped in jazz ballads, old waltzes, European folk songs, theatrical love paeans, and music not so easily identified. The instrumentation is different, with the utilization of a small chamber orchestra (the violins are Stroh violins, instruments outfitted with a metal horn on the end for amplification purposes), marimbas, piano, organ, woodwinds, and reeds, and the complete absence of guitars. The set opens with the title track, a smoky jazz ballad that may echo Waits' work from the 1970s, but is actually miles beyond it in scope. Here there is no purposely postured nuance or affectation of persona. The lyric is plaintive and full of pathos; it's almost a suicide note set to the most romantic melodic invention lounge jazz is capable of. As Waits sings, "The only strings that hold me here/Are tangled up around the pier/And so a secret kiss/Brings madness with the bliss/And I will think of this/When I'm dead and in my grave/Set me adrift/I'm lost over there/But I must be insane/To go on skating on your name/And by tracing it twice I fell through the ice/Of Alice/There's only Alice," the world turns inside out and the listener can no longer decide if this is a man or a ghost reporting from beneath the pond's surface. If love brings this, if obsession has such a cost, how can they be steeped in tenderness this transparent and plain? Elsewhere, Waits manages to delve into the voice of the turned-out lover, the rejected stone, the lost madman, as he does on "We're All Mad Here" and "Everything You Can Think." But even here there is a reflective dimension, nearly childlike in their simple embrace of loss, dispossession, and descent into the maelstrom of the human soul. Ghosts whisper in the mix, spirits float through the air, and demons passionately possess the protagonists. In the simpler, melting melodies of "Lost in the Harbour," "No One Knows I'm Gone," and the haunting tango at the heart of "Watch Her Disappear," obsession with the unmentionable (let alone the unattainable) is offered as an empathy for powerlessness, buoyed up by an instrumental crutch, arranged to give a voice to those who dare not speak publicly. The melodies on Alice are easily the most direct Waits has written since Blue Valentine, but are more elegant than even those found on Foreign Affairs or Black Rider. Alice is no step back, but a further step toward oblivion — the place where the sound of desolation, the melody of loneliness, and the confused darkness at the root of the human heart come together and speak as one in a nursery rhyme for adults.
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Alice
Tom Waits Lyrics
It's dreamy weather we're on
You waved your crooked wand
Along an icy pond with a frozen moon
A murder of silhouette crows I saw
And the tears on my face
And the skates on the pond
They spell Alice
I disappear in your name
But you must wait for me
Somewhere across the sea
There's a wreck of a ship
Your hair is like meadow grass on the tide
And the raindrops on my window
And the ice in my drink
Baby all I can think of is Alice
Arithmetic arithmetock
Turn the hands back on the clock
How does the ocean rock the boat?
How did the razor find my throat?
The only strings that hold me here
Are tangled up around the pier
And so a secret kiss
Brings madness with the bliss
And I will think of this
When I'm dead in my grave
Set me adrift and I'm lost over there
And I must be insane
To go skating on your name
And by tracing it twice
I fell through the ice
Of Alice
And so a secret kiss
Brings madness with the bliss
And I will think of this
When I'm dead in my grave
Set me adrift and I'm lost over there
And I must be insane
To go skating on your name
And by tracing it twice
I fell through the ice
Of Alice
There's only Alice
Lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group
Written by: Kathleen Brennan, Thomas Alan Waits
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind
To comment on specific lyrics, highlight them
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"Alice"
It's dreamy weather we're on
You waved your crooked wand
Along an icy pond with a frozen moon
A murder of silhouette crows I saw
And the tears on my face
And the skates on the pond
They spell Alice
I disappear in your name
But you must wait for me
Somewhere across the sea
There's a wreck of a ship
Your hair is like meadow grass on the tide
And the raindrops on my window
And the ice in my drink
Baby all I can think of is Alice
Arithmetic arithmetock
Turn the hands back on the clock
How does the ocean rock the boat?
How did the razor find my throat?
The only strings that hold me here
Are tangled up around the pier
And so a secret kiss
Brings madness with the bliss
And I will think of this
When I'm dead in my grave
Set me adrift and I'm lost over there
And I must be insane
To go skating on your name
And by tracing it twice
I fell through the ice
Of Alice
And so a secret kiss
Brings madness with the bliss
And I will think of this
When I'm dead in my grave
Set me adrift and I'm lost over there
And I must be insane
To go skating on your name
And by tracing it twice
I fell through the ice
Of Alice
There's only Alice
Dora Maria Vassiliou
It's dreamy weather we're on
You waved your crooked wand
Along an icy pond with a frozen moon
A murder of silhouette crows I saw
And the tears on my face
And the skates on the pond
They spell Alice
I disappear in your name
But you must wait for me
Somewhere across the sea
There's a wreck of a ship
Your hair is like meadow grass on the tide
And the raindrops on my window
And the ice in my drink
Baby all I can think of is Alice
Arithmetic arithmetock
Turn the hands back on the clock
How does the ocean rock the boat?
How did the razor find my throat?
The only strings that hold me here
Are tangled up around the pier
And so a secret kiss
Brings madness with the bliss
And I will think of this
When I'm dead in my grave
Set me adrift and I'm lost over there
And I must be insane
To go skating on your name
And by tracing it twice
I fell through the ice
Of Alice
And so a secret kiss
Brings madness with the bliss
And I will think of this
When I'm dead in my grave
Set me adrift and I'm lost over there
And I must be insane
To go skating on your name
And by tracing it twice
I fell through the ice
Of Alice
There's only Alice
luke sic
The saxophone solo breaks my heart everytime.
Tim Egan
It's definitely a saxophone being featured. There are other horns too but alto sax in the foreground
PGM09
Ara Anderson – Muted trumpet
Russ Kort
Or is it a clarinet?
Mark Arandjus
This song sounds like every movie about a man smoking at a bar, trying to drink his sorrows away, while it's raining outside ♥
The Light
You probably get the essence, but I think there's quite a bit more. He's not a Bukowski, Tom is real, a comfortable pianist and kind man. Can't wait for more music.
ana barkaia
Exactly <3
Maxwell Fletcher-Beiers
It's about something much darker
TheCBLingo
Tom Waits sounds like a man smoking at a bar trying to drink his sorrows away with a mug of cigarettes while it's raining cigarettes outside
Richard Beacher
Christ, you been my mail?