Various Artists – Come On Up To The House: Women Sing Waits
Dualtone Music – 22 November 2019
What it says on the tin, a collection of songs written by Tom Waits and here sung by a stellar cast of female Americana singers and produced by longtime fan Warren Zanes. I have to start, however, with my single reservation as I am yet to be fully persuaded by Portland trio Joseph. They open proceedings with the title track, a slow, solemn piano-backed, world-weary vocal treatment that taps into the gospel elements listenably enough, but I can’t help imagining what it would have sounded like done by Rhiannon Giddens and it might have been better situated later in the running order. Still, that’s just a personal preference and won’t diminish the album’s pleasures for the vast majority.
Aimee Mann’s next up with a rhythmically chugging, calypso-like Hold On from Mule Variations, warmly singing into her chest in emulation of Tom’s gravelly growl, followed by Georgia Lee from the same album (though he had to be badgered by his daughter to include it), harmonium replacing the original piano, and its story of Georgia Lee Moses, the 12-year-old black girl who was abducted and murdered, her body dumped not far from his home, given an intimately tender reading by Phoebe Bridges as she heartbreakingly sings “Why wasn’t God watching? Why wasn’t God listening? Why wasn’t God there for Georgia Lee?”
The first of the familiar classics comes courtesy of sisters Shelby Lynne and Allison Moorer harmonising on a simple piano, drums and strings arrangement Ol’55, complete with count-in as per the original, which, sacrilege I know, it leaves straggling in its wake.
Australian singer Angie McMahon is one of the lesser-known names here, but her interpretation of Take It With Me, another from Mule Variations, is a knockout, transforming Waits’ late-night cellar bar jazz piano version into a breathily-sung, fragile and minimally arranged dreamy reminiscence with cinematic shimmering strings evoking something Garland might have sung in one of her more melancholic movie moments.
Then it’s back to the evergreens as Corrine Bailey Rae steps up for a standout undulatingly slow and smooth take on Jersey Girl that conjures the feel of waves lapping on island shores, followed by a six-minute tremulously sung Ruby’s Arms by Patty Griffin, ditching the brass of Heart Attack and Vine for a simple piano and strings-accompaniment. And just when you think it can’t get any better, along comes Rosanne Cash whose version of the poignant loneliness-themed Time from Rain Dogs doesn’t just knock it out of the park, but the entire state.
The most recent song comes from 2006, You Can Never Hold Back Spring and its uplifting lyric about the certainty of emerging from the metaphorical winter figuring on the second disc of the three album Orphans set, there a woodwinds-laced New Orleans march, here given a dreamy vintage show tune makeover by Texan jazz-pop songstress Kat Edmonson.
But it’s the next two tracks where the album touches the sublime, first, featuring pedal steel, with the inestimable Iris DeMent singing yet another from Mule Variations, the achingly vulnerable and ineffably sad House Where Nobody Lives. She’s a hard act to follow, but who better to do so than the magnificent Courtney Marie Andrews whose desperate emotion soaked cover of Rain Dogs’ Downtown Train leaves Rod Stewart’s own stunning version sulking in the corner.
It ends with the coming together of another lesser-known act, Californian five-piece indie-folk outfit The Wild Reeds, and what, appearing on 1976’s Small Change, many would argue is the jewel in the Waits catalogue, Tom Traubert’s Blues with its interpolation of Waltzing Mathilda. No one could top the original, but they can hold their heads up and stand proud.
The songs given softer tones than Waits’ gruff gravel, but never polishing out the raw emotion in the lyrics, while it would have been even better with the inclusion of Looking For The Heart Of Saturday Night sung by Gretchen Peters or Caroline Spence doing San Diego Serenade, this is an open house invitation you really should take up.