Blood Money (2002)

Blood Money (2002)

Blood Money, inspired by Georg Buchner’s Woyzeck, a bleak tale of infidelity, murder, and army experiments, is the third and final collaboration between Waits and Brennan and director Robert Wilson (following The Black Rider and Alice, respectively). The album’s songs generally keep to the gloomy themes of Woyzeck ; the most uptempo number on the album bears the title “Starving In The Belly Of The Whale,” after all. Instant Waits classics abound, especially the Rain Dogs-y “God’s Away On Business,” featuring Waits hectoring like a Scooby Doo Frankenstein in towering silhouette, and album closer “A Good Man Is Hard To Find,” about a forgotten soldier from a forgotten war, sounds like a Louie Armstrong / Edward Gorey composition. Mostly, though, Blood Money is a frosty, often impenetrable collection of slow motion cabaret music, with a moribund-sounding Waits mumbling like he’s been roused from a nap to mumble melodies from barely-remembered Latin American musicals. If this sounds compelling, it should: Blood Money, like Lou Reed’s Berlin and Joy Division’s Closer, is an album meant to accompany the washing down of sleeping pills with Two Buck Chuck, and, using that criteria, it is a rousing success.