Though its songs were written ten years earlier for a 1992 play directed by occasional collaborator Robert Wilson, Alice was released simultaneously with the similarly sinister Blood Money, another long-gestating release inspired by a theatrical work. Unlike its counterpart, however, Alice arrived much anticipated: The songs, based on a musical play about the life of Lewis Carroll, had already been traded for years among fans as a bootleg called The Alice Demos (a misnomer: these ‘demos’ were actually studio recordings rendered demo-like through generations of dubbing and copying). Tom Waits described the album as “adult songs for children, or children’s songs for adults,” and there is indeed something to the macabre but oddly romantic numbers herein that recall Grimm fairytales. Theatrical and heavy on the strings, Alice was written from the point of view of a specter, and Waits’ gloomy croon provides the ideal instrument to deliver the spooks. The album’s mood is so uneasy and casually dissonant that an occasional frolic like the jaunty “Kommienezuspadt” or the skiffle-like “Table Top Joe,” seems out of place. “Dig deep in your heart for the little red glow, ” Waits sings on the fugue-like “Everything You Can Think”, “we’re decomposing as we go.” Unlike previous albums written specifically for, but disembodied from, a theatrical work, you seldom get the feeling here that you’re only getting part of the story ; Alice is plenty nightmarish enough on its own.