Well the radio ain't telling them to buy this one.
I read a review that said (this might have been RS) for someone covering one of the most theatrical artists in the business, she didn't bring a lot herself.
And listening to it, I had to agree, although not in the same fashion. The album had a very post-punk sound (ease off genre Nazis, I don’t care) and the music and the vocal, while they go together well, shouldn’t be singing these songs. Its got a very robotic vibe and I think this has to do with the way the album came together.
I read that originally she had a group of session musicians and it was coming together like bad Karaoke. When she grabbed the gent from Tv on the Radio, he said “if you want to do a bunch of Tom Waits covers, you want to look elsewhere, but if you want to do something really banana’s, I’m your man.” So she went with him.
While I have to agree with her decision in that choice, we’re not agreeing on our definition of what “bananas” is. If you asked me, Wait’s tunes are already there, and to change them but keep the passion, my suggestion might have been more in the vein of Cabaret. But Johansen can’t sing that, and I don’t know if I’d have liked it any better. The point is, if Waits songs are bananas, she just made it banana flavored baby food: Easy to swallow, bland, and not to hard on the digestive track.
But I shouldn’t say the album was a waste of time. Certain tracks lend themselves, given the characters scenario in a song, to Johansen’s a-emotional delivery. “Anywhere I lay my head,” awash in syth-ambiance conveys someone so numb from the journey that this tale of woe is just another recitation. I found this to work in a similar fashion to A Perfect Circle’s “What’s going on” where a lack of emotion is a character trait that fits the character and their situation.
Sadly, most of the Waitsian catalogue is meant for Waits himself and Johansen, for better or worse…well she just ain’t him.
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