Desert Island Discourse

Can you hear the blind street urchins banging their garbage cans? The rabbit bones clattering through our drain pipes? The conjoined twins looming portraits of the damned on Broadway? Do you know what it all means folks? That's right: Waitsmas day is upon us! We've finally reached the apex of the one true holiday season, and are celebrating in style by inviting recurring castaway/life and death of the party Andy McAlpine to gush our way through the second half of the Tom Waits oeuvre, from the dramatis personae of Franks Wild Years to the raucous collage of Bad As Me.

After the Kathleen Brennan-inspired madness of Swordfishtrombones and Rain Dogs established a new direction for Tom Waits, he embarked on some of the freest experimentation of his career, embracing industrial primitivism on the apocalyptic Bone Machine and a Burroughsian carnival on The Black Rider. It was a period where he took his newfound freedom into strange new places, creating strange works that would never be repeated again before. And then, with the impeccable Mule Variations, the Tom Waits sound was fully canonized, setting off his path into respected elder statesman. But while many icons go stale at that point, Tom continued to make incredible albums, and while his pace has slowed down the quality of it has been as high as ever.

Which is all a long-winded way of saying that this is one of our most enthusiastic episodes since Sleater-Kinney, a beer-fueled mirth-fest that's as raucous and celebratory as Waitsmas day should be. It's all about finding joy in the darkness, and we can't think of a better way to cap off a year like this than by inviting you to join us here, in this cave, around this weird-smelling yet intoxicating fire we call Tom Waits. Pay no mind to the screaming outside. Also: Andrew dispels the myth of Coney Island, Andy advertises the Gay Witch Life in western Mass, and Max dies at the end.

We're going straight to the top, fellow Waitsmas celebrants! Or, at least, y'all are—Max is deathly ill and coughing all over this track. But we aren't going to let a little thing like death get in the way of talking about one of the weirdest and most wonderful live films we've seen: Tom Waits' Big Time. As the ersatz "t's a Wonderful Life of the season, Big Time is an odd one, since its nearly impossible to find rather than everywhere always, but Waitsmas is all about making life a lot harder than it needs to be, right?

Filmed hot off the heels of his Franks Wild Years tour, dubbed by many to be his greatest ever, Big Time bucks the cinéma vérité style of films like Stop Making Sense for a more surreal, imagistic pastiche, blending live footage with odd, go-nowhere vignettes and singular fever dreams. It's more "visual companion" than "concert film", while still delivering some truly bone shakin' performances from a band packed with all-time greats like Marc Ribot and Ralph Carney that tear through the material—all plucked from his post-Swordfishtrombones output—like a pack of drunken robot dogs. You heard me. Drunken robot dogs. Oh lord, I think the Mucinex is kicking in~~~~. Also: the heartbreak of modern dating apps, an extensive interlude on World of Tomorrow 2, and perhaps the only time anyone has ever compared Tom Waits to Madonna.

Merry Waitsmas drunks and drunkettes! Yes, tis the season when all islanders forsake God and turn their eyes to the gutter in worship of the one true king: Tom Waits. This week we're flying guestless so we can get down and dirty with the first half of his career, watching as a Brill Building jazzbo blooms into a sort of horrifying junkyard scarecrow preacher man. If you've ever wondered what it sounds like when an iconoclast is still trying to find their voice, the line of albums from Closing Time to Rain Dogs is a good place to start. But it's also filled with some of the most genuinely beautiful work of his career, packed with bawling ballads and jazzy improv that would fall to the wayside later in his career. So join us as we inaugurate the actual most wonderful time of the year, and maybe—just maybe—learn a little bit about ourselves. Also: Andrew blasphemes against Captain Beefheart, the Melvoin Alert returns, and we all hear the story of how baby Max met the reason for the season.

Can't wait for Waitsmas? Neither can we, so we're opening one of our presents early, only to discover that Grandma screwed up again and got us the wrong thing—a Tom Waits cover album, courtesy of Scarlett Johansson and Dave Sitek. Back in 2008, they came together to give us "Anywhere I Lay My Head," the most baffling crossover vanity project of that innocent time before an evil land developer from an 80's movie literally took the white house. But while "Actress Scarlett Johansson and TV on the Radio Member Dave Sitek Make an Album of Tom Waits Covers with Special Guest David Bowie" seems like a particularly hipster mad-lib from the outside, the result is actually surprisingly pleasant, and even—dare we say—a little dull.

Rather than taking the obvious route of Downtown Trains and Uptown Buses, "Anywhere I Lay My Head" is a collection of some real latter day deep cuts, the kind of playlist that belies a genuine fandom. And Sitek's production is definitely a fresh take, turning each track into a sort of technicolor Julee Cruise dreamscape. But is that enough to make this a project worth revisiting? Also: The Beach vs. The Island, Subway gift card dilemmas, and several burps that Andrew really should've edited out.

Need a big loan from the girl zone? Well this desert island has you covered, thanks to longtime castaway enthusiast (first-time castaway) Caroline Pendleton! With her anime-fueled determination, Max's lifetime devotion, and Andrew's generally pleasant demeanor, we have everything we need to cover the first half of the discography of songwriter/piano-bench humper Tori Amos. That's right, we're all Toriphiles now.

Tori Amos is sort of an anomaly in the music scene. She's a classically-trained pianist who made her name writing lyrically and melodically dense albums, but she's also a die-hard pop fan who was kicked out of music school for refusing to read sheet music. She's boasts a dry wit and a fanciful streak a mile wide whose biggest hit was a dance remix of a harpsichord song that heavily features the line "starfucker/just like my daddy". But for her diehard fanbase (of whom Caroline and Max count themselves a part), Tori Amos is quite simply one of the greatest songwriters of her era, and her discography is filled with wild experimentation, impeccable songcraft, and a bizarre penchant for soft-rock excess.

This week, we're covering the first half of her extensive oeuvre, from her stark, piano-focused debut to the post-9/11 adult contemporary concept album Scarlet's Walk. The albums she released in this period were some of her most creatively vibrant, establishing her as a force to be reckoned with even as she dipped in and out of the charts. And, of course, we tackle it with all the grace and aplomb you've come to expect from us—which is to say, none. Also: the place of Goth in our schools, the debut of the CureBerries, and a song for the Greg inside us all.

Links:

Making of Boys for Pele: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdWIFfeXPLo

Great Version of Space Dog: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DlAGdHUdehI

Bob’s Burgers Tori Amos Parody: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmy9CTn6xMs

Running Up That Hill/God: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mG7C08HZ_8o

Y kant tori read: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fh4B0jjVeYU

Toriphoria: http://www.yessaid.com/

Music:

Do It Again (Steely Dan Cover)

The Big Picture (Y Kant Tori Read)

Precious Things

China

Winter

Mother

God

Pretty Good Year

Past the Mission

Space Dog

The Wrong Band

Professional Widow

Horses

Caught a Lite Sneeze

Blood Roses

Hey Jupiter

Spark

i i e e e

Raspberry Swirl

Hotel

Bliss

Concertina

Josephine

Datura

Cruel (Live)

Mr. Zebra (Live)

Cooling

Wednesday

Your Cloud

I Can’t See New York

Snow Cherries From France

Pandora’s Aquarium

Marianne

Bells for Her

Flying Dutchman

CW: R*pe, pedophilia, abuse, misogyny

We've taken down our Brand New episode because we no longer wish to have a document out there supporting the music of an abuser. This clip is a more in-depth explanation of our thoughts on the matter. We do not mean to erase our mistakes and pretend as if they never happened—we simply want to prevent those mistakes from hurting anymore people.

Here are some better written, more articulate pieces written about what happened, the toxic culture that supported it, and the people left in its wake:

"The Specific Betrayal of Brand New" by Zoe Camp: https://theoutline.com/post/2499/brand-new-sexual-harrassment-emo

"Unraveling the Sexism of Emo's Third Wave" by Jenn Pelly: https://pitchfork.com/thepitch/unraveling-the-sexism-of-emos-third-wave/?mbid=homepage-more-latest-and-video

Are you ready to Free Fiona? Well, too bad—she's already free, and has been for, like, 12 years. But that's not gonna stop us from examining one of the strangest and, oddly, most controversial albums of her career: Extraordinary Machine. Both of them. Since the first, Jon Brion-produced version was held in limbo by Sony for so long, Fiona ended up re-recording the whole album from the ground up with part-time Dr. Dre collaborator Mike Elizondo for its official release. So with two significantly different versions of it in existence, Extraordinary Machine has long been a strange and divisive beast, which is why it was especially fun for us to dive in and dissect the successes and failures of these two disparate machines. Will we discover which producer is best? Or will we come to our senses and finally focus on the impeccable songcraft at the core of the album? Why not both? Also: Weird Al's hot new single, the year of male consequence, and the shocking return of "Meet Me in Con-Talk."

As one of the only survivors of the short-lived and abominably-titled "freak folk" movement of the early-oughts, Joanna Newsom made a name for herself by taking what first seemed like a gimmick—her status as a classically-trained pedal-harp player—and turning it into a career packed with dense lyrical brambles, impeccably constructed song-craft, and her own divisive, inimitable chicken-fried-Björk singing voice. She's a sentimental favorite of everyone on this episode, leading to a surprisingly contentious but heartfelt discussion of the four albums she's written to date. It's an episode packed with heartbreak and unlikely alliances, capped off with our very first letters section! Also: Max reveals the origin of her vendetta against Van Dyke Parks, Andy shills for the pleasures of suburban Western Mass, and Ryan Shea gets just super roasted for, like, no reason. He’s not even on the episode. Sorry Ryan.

We have no calendars or seasons or sense of the progression of time here on the island, but that's not gonna stop us from celebrating what we're told is Halloween. And for us, that means celebrating one of the spookiest soundtracks for one of the spookiest movies by one of the spookiest bands we could find: the Suspiria soundtrack by Goblin! A creepy combination of cacophonous ambience and straight up prog rock, this soundtrack is one of the most interesting—and listenable—horror movie soundtracks out there. And of course, we also delve into an in-depth discussion of Dario Argento's surreal, visually stunning nightmare, which also just so happens to be Max's favorite horror movie of all time. Also: occult psychology, the importance of razor wire rooms, and a celebration of national treasure Jessica Harper.

It's time for Angstoberfest to bid a teary, mascara-stained farewell, but not before taking an extra melodramatic bow. So now, one week after covering the best (early-oughts) emo band of all time, we're traveling to the flipside of the much derided sadness coin with the world's best nü-metal band: Deftones. That's right, this episode is all about how Max's favorite no-longer-guilty-pleasure band slowly transformed from a bunch of So-Cal Korn fans into one of the foremost experimenters in a notoriously conservative genre. But are they really the Radiohead of metal? Or is that a stupid, lazy comparison made by a legion of hacks who don't know how to talk about anything without referencing Radiohead and have probably never listened to any metal past Metallica's black album? Sorry, I have a chip on my shoulder about this. Anyway, enjoy! In a sad way! Also: the death of compact discs, Grindr is magic, and the Tom Waits Advent Calendar.