TOM WAITS

"REAL GONE" (ANTI-)

In his more abrasive moments here, Tom Waits could almost pass for a sinister cross between Marilyn Manson, Screamin' Jay Hawkins and that Froggy kid from "Little Rascals."

Only scarier.

And more demented.

It suits the material, though, from the chain-gang groove and junkyard clatter of "Don't Go Into the Barn" and "Top of the Hill" (which sets the mood with "New corn yellow and slaughterhouse red/The birds keep singin' baby after you're dead") to the human-beatbox-driven freakishness with which he trails off at the end.

It's a richly textured madness, at times suggesting the soundtrack to some David Lynch film set inside a Victorian lunatic asylum -- with Marc Ribot on lead guitar, Les Claypool of Primus on bass and Waits out front barking and yowling and spitting his way through a series of colorful studies in unrelenting darkness like a man possessed.

Or maybe not a man possessed. He sounds more like a drowning sewer rat possessed in the feral, wheezing climax of "Metropolitan Glide."

"Smoke is blacking out the sun," he rasps in "Hoist That Rag," "At night, I pray and clean my gun." In "Sins of the Father," having sold his soul, he wanders through the darkness howling, "Night is falling like a bloody axe/Lies and rumors and the wind at my back/Hand on the wheel, gravel on the road/Will the pawn shop sell me back what I sold."

It's hard to picture Springsteen or Rod Stewart lining up to cover anything on "Real Gone" -- certainly not "Shake It," a song whose unhinged cries of "Shake it, baby, shake it," sound more like outtakes from Jerry Lee Lewis' personal life than his records. Even when he damn near croons on "How's It Gonna End," you won't soon shake the darkness at the heart of Waits' vision here. The vultures are drying their wings, a girl gone missing has sunk like a hammer into the lake and there's a killer coming through the rye. "Drag your wagon and your plow over the bones of the dead," he sighs. "You can never go back and the answer is no/And wishing for it only makes it bleed."

Some old-school fans will no doubt miss the tender side of Waits' legacy, but those who prize the darker, more eccentric side of what he's done more recently will eat it up as sure as a few of the characters here would eat your soul.

-- Ed Masley, Post-Gazette pop music critic

NICK CAVE

THE BAD SEEDS "ABBATOIR BLUES/THE LYRE OF ORPHEUS" (MUTE)

Having weighed in last year with the stunning "Nocturama," Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds are back with a two-record set, divided OutKast-style into two separate albums, one titled "Abbatoir Blues," the other "The Lyre of Orpheus." There's not a moment on either album as unhinged as the glorious 15-minute closing track of "Nocturama," but "Abbatoir Blues" is the rocker here -- the gospel-stoked garage-punk stomp of "Get Ready for Love" to the clattering, slow-burning menace of the bluesy "Hiding All Away." Both tracks use a gospel choir, an effect that works better on some songs than others, at least in the early stages of soaking in two albums' worth of new material. Other tracks, from the Cohen-esque drama of "Cannibal's Hymn" to the title track (a big beat ballad), are more in keeping with the contemplative, understated mood of "The Lyre of Orpheus," the more consistent of the two, its highlights ranging from the mythic yearning of the title track (which twists the myth of Orpheus into a darkly comic parable where Orpheus' lyre becomes a weapon of mass destruction) to the gorgeous melody of "Breathless" to, well, nearly every track. The spoken-word come-ons of "Babe, You Turn Me On" elude the corniness that often comes with monologues in rock -- since Elvis died, at least -- with a seemingly effortless grace. And with "O Children," he closes the deal -- and the album -- with a gorgeous, gospel-flavored gem in which he offsets the darkness and heartache of life on Earth with uplifting final refrains where the children whose broken little hearts were lying on the butcher's floor are free to board the train to a happier Kingdom.

-- Ed Masley, Post-Gazette pop music critic