Then there’s his voice, about which there’s half a century of vibrant metaphors and descriptions. His music sounds like it’s always on the verge of coming together, yet it has a cohesion and consistency that makes it immediately recognizable. He loves percussion, but many of his greatest songs feature only light tapping, misty snare shuffles, or, often, no drums at all. Waits’ sound is all over the map-he likes tight jazz instrumentation, but orchestrates it to sound more like Captain Beefheart than Thelonious Monk. Blending blues, jazz, rock, and experimental music (among other genres), his tableaus of modern life find spiritual common ground everywhere-from Tin Pan Alley, Harry Partch, and Bob Dylan to Raymond Carver, Jack Kerouac, and Charles Bukowski. Few musicians have captured the emotional complexity of being an American in the 20th and 21st centuries with as much elegance and nuance as Tom Waits.
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