Tom Waits – Franks Wild Years (2023 Remaster) (1987/2023) [FLAC 24bit/192kHz]

Tom Waits – Franks Wild Years (2023 Remaster) (1987/2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 56:39 minutes | 2,06 GB | Genre: Blues Rock, Jazz Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Island Records (The Island Def Jam Music Group / Universal Music)

Franks Wild Years is the tenth studio album by Tom Waits, released 1987 on Island Records. Subtitled “Un Operachi Romantico in Two Acts”, the album contains songs written by Waits and collaborators (mainly his wife, Kathleen Brennan) for a play of the same name. The shared title of the album and the play is an iteration of “Frank’s Wild Years”, a song from Waits’ 1983 album Swordfishtrombones.

The play had its world premiere at the Briar St. Theatre in Chicago, Illinois, on June 22, 1986, performed by the Steppenwolf Theatre Company.

Various versions of “Way Down in the Hole” were used as the theme music for the HBO series The Wire, including Waits’ original version for the second season. The songs “Temptation” and “Cold Cold Ground” were used in Jean-Claude Lauzon’s film Léolo (1992). “Cold Cold Ground” was also used in the series Homicide: Life on the Street. “Temptation” and “Straight to the Top (Vegas)” featured in the film Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (2005), and “Innocent When You Dream” featured in the film Smoke (1995). The song “If I Have to Go” was used in the play, but released only in 2006 on Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards. The theme from “If I Have to Go” was used under the title “Rat’s Theme” in the documentary Streetwise as early as 1984. “Yesterday Is Here” appears in “The Night Shift”, the second episode of the 2023 mystery drama series Poker Face.Tom Waits wrote a song called “Frank’s Wild Years” for his 1983 Swordfishtrombones album, then used the title (minus its apostrophe) for a musical play he wrote with his wife, Kathleen Brennan, and toured with in 1986. The Franks Wild Years album, drawn from the show, is subtitled, “un operachi romantico in two acts,” though the songs themselves do not carry the plot. Rather, this is just the third installment in Waits’ eccentric series of Island Records albums in which he seems most inspired by German art song and carnival music, presenting songs in spare, stripped-down arrangements consisting of instruments like marimba, baritone horn, and pump organ and singing in a strained voice that has been artificially compressed and distorted. The songs themselves often are conventional romantic vignettes, or would be minus the oddities of instrumentation, arrangement, and performance. For example, “Innocent When You Dream,” a song of disappointment in love and friendship, has a winning melody, but it is played in a seesaw arrangement of pump organ, bass, violin, and piano, and Waits sings it like an enraged drunk. (He points out the arbitrary nature of the arrangements by repeating “Straight to the Top,” done as a demented rhumba in act one, as a Vegas-style Frank Sinatra swing tune in act two.) The result on record may not be theatrical, exactly, but it certainly is affected. It also has the quality of an inside joke that listeners are not being let in on. – William Ruhlmann

Tracklist:

1-1. Tom Waits – Hang On St. Christopher (2023 Remaster) (02:44)
1-2. Tom Waits – Straight To The Top (Rhumba) (2023 Remaster) (02:30)
1-3. Tom Waits – Blow Wind Blow (2023 Remaster) (03:34)
1-4. Tom Waits – Temptation (2023 Remaster) (03:53)
1-5. Tom Waits – Innocent When You Dream (Barroom) (2023 Remaster) (04:15)
1-6. Tom Waits – I’ll Be Gone (2023 Remaster) (03:13)
1-7. Tom Waits – Yesterday Is Here (2023 Remaster) (02:32)
1-8. Tom Waits – Please Wake Me Up (2023 Remaster) (03:34)
1-9. Tom Waits – Franks Theme (2023 Remaster) (01:46)
1-10. Tom Waits – More Than Rain (2023 Remaster) (03:51)
1-11. Tom Waits – Way Down In The Hole (2023 Remaster) (03:30)
1-12. Tom Waits – Straight To The Top (Vegas) (2023 Remaster) (03:21)
1-13. Tom Waits – I’ll Take New York (2023 Remaster) (04:03)
1-14. Tom Waits – Telephone Call From Istanbul (2023 Remaster) (03:11)
1-15. Tom Waits – Cold Cold Ground (2023 Remaster) (04:07)
1-16. Tom Waits – Train Song (2023 Remaster) (03:20)
1-17. Tom Waits – Innocent When You Dream (78) (2023 Remaster) (03:08)

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