The Rasp Man Goes Operatic

****

TOM WAITS

“Alice” and “Blood Money”

Anti

The title track of “Alice,” one of the two Tom Waits albums coming out Tuesday, raises the curtain on a familiar scene: brushed drums, sleepy sax and muted trumpet, the heartbreak lyric, raspy voice and languid tempo--it’s the wee-hours jazz-joint wind-down that was Waits’ habitat early in his career.

The rest of “Alice” and the companion album “Blood Money” serve up more of the musical signatures Waits has established in his three-decade oeuvre: Weimar Republic cabaret to bluesy scrap yard symphonies, sentimental, nostalgic parlor ballads to clattering cartoon soundtracks.

In these two records, though, Waits, co-writer Kathleen Brennan and their musicians bring to bear a new level of authority and ambition, corralling the often obstreperous music in two thematic frameworks.

Each album is a set of songs written for an opera. “Alice” premiered in Germany in 1992 and “Blood Money” in Denmark in 2000, both directed by avant-garde hero Robert Wilson. Waits’ gifts for character and storytelling really flower in the context of a narrative, even ones as fragmented as these sometimes are.

“Alice,” whose story is inspired by Lewis Carroll’s fixation on young Alice Liddell, begins as a straightforward look at unrequited obsession and drifts into a disquieting dreamscape, where a man born without a body becomes a popular entertainer named Table Top Joe, where a man is tormented by a face on the back of his head, and images of death and decomposition sink and resurface.

The music, wheezing like a woozy klezmer band, favors violins and other strings. Clarinets and percussion tend to dominate “Blood Money,” a more extroverted and theatrical album based on “Woyzeck,” a cheery 19th century play by Georg Buchner about exploitation, murder and suicide. (The opera will appear as part of UCLA Live’s 2002-03 season.)

Actually, Waits and Brennan manage to make this bleak view of the human condition pretty amusing. “All the good in the world/you can put inside a thimble/and still have room for you and me,” he sings in “Misery Is the River of the World,” a snappy opener that sets the album’s bright, almost garish tone.

Earlier in his career, Waits’ raspy, toneless voice appeared to be a detriment, but over the years he’s discovered how to give it a wide range of shadings and modulations.

He now chooses a character’s vocal persona like a master craftsman selecting from a case of precisely designed tools, shifting voices from the old-dog croon that prevails in “Alice” to the gruff, staccato bark of “Blood Money’s” sinister ringmaster.

Although the two pieces don’t provide clear-cut happy endings, it all somehow comes full circle. Given the rigors of the journey, that proves to be reward enough.

Richard Cromelin

**

KENNY CHESNEY

“No Shoes, No Shirt, No Problems”

BNA

If the Harlequin Romance folks ever decide to start a record label, Kenny Chesney’s their boy.

This Tennessean has quietly become a big name over the last eight years mostly on the strength of his I’ll-do-or-sacrifice-anything-for-love romanticism, a niche that puts him in the same country corner with Tim McGraw (who duets on one tune) and John Michael Montgomery. The beefcake album photos further exploit his pinup appeal.

The songs on his first studio album in three years, which entered the national sales chart at No. 1 last week, tint several love stories with a reflective melancholy. Yet when he’s recalling missed opportunities, the scenarios remain highly idealized, pulled more from a volume of archetypal memories than directly from any real lives.

The Bill Anderson-Dean Dillon meditation on regret, “A Lot of Things Different,” is the album’s most interesting track, and Chesney sing-talks it with a honeysuckle-sweet Southern drawl that makes him a vocal dead ringer for Rodney Crowell.

To keep his male fans from tuning out, he leans on the Jimmy Buffett-like attitude of the title tune and the Springsteen-esque rocker “Young,” a rather diluted replay of “Glory Days.”

He also turns in a carbon-copy version of Springsteen’s own “One Step Up” that pays respectful tribute to the Boss without adding anything.

The mere attempt makes the album one step up from silly novelty hits such as “She Thinks My Tractor’s Sexy,” but he’s still got room to try plowing a bit deeper.

Randy Lewis

In Brief

*** Fatboy Slim, “Live at Brighton Beach,” Ministry of Sound. By opening his first mix CD (in stores Tuesday) with Underworld’s classic “Born Slippy,” Fatboy Slim sends an immediate message--he’s reaching for the masses. Bless him for it. Whereas most mix CDs go with the esoteric, Slim unapologetically fills “Live at Brighton Beach” with recognizable songs from the likes of Leftfield and, yes, Fatboy Slim. In his world, there’s nothing wrong with having a smile on your face as you hit the dance floor. Steve Baltin

*** Naughty by Nature, “iicons,” TVT. Even though its lineup is down to just rappers Treach and Vinnie, Naughty by Nature shows no signs of slowdown on its fifth album. The departure of silky smooth producer KayGee, the man behind “O.P.P.” and other NBN hits, doesn’t do any damage as a slew of new beatsmiths makes muscular music for the group’s hearty, party-oriented lyricists. Grimy club music rarely sounds this accessible. Soren Baker

**1/2 Brazzaville, “Rouge on Pockmarked Cheeks,” South China Sea. The L.A. group’s third album (due Tuesday) blends wide-ranging styles--bossa nova, moody jazz, Tom Waits starkness, folk-rock, etc.--into a sophisticated pop that sometimes recalls the sprightlier numbers on Beck’s “Mutations” (which isn’t surprising, as various Brazzaville members have worked with Waits, Beck and Ozomatli). If singer-songwriter David Brown’s spare, melancholy poetry isn’t always as compelling as the sonic variations, he shifts engagingly from just-outside-the-window portraits to global concerns. The group plays Thursday at the Knitting Factory Hollywood.

Natalie Nichols

*** Blackalicious, “Blazing Arrow,” MCA. The rapper known as the Gift of Gab and producer Chief Xcel helped spur the Bay Area’s underground hip-hop movement in the mid-1990s, and their forward-thinking tendencies continue on their group’s inventive major-label debut. Xcel incorporates crisp drums, heavy piano and moody keyboards into his beats, while Gab’s abstract ruminations on life are often thought-provoking. Soren Baker

* Luis Enrique, “Transparente,” Chazz/Warner Music. This Nicaraguan singer-percussionist was among the more interesting of the dreary 1980s salsa romantica crowd. But this album shows that squishy salsa has a short shelf life. Not even skilled musicians and polished production, partly by Sergio George, can save this lame collection of cliched love songs. Sample translated lyric: “Sometimes it feels like I’m dreaming/When I see you by my side/I’m lucky/I can wake up with you.” Mercifully, the rest of us were put to sleep. Agustin Gurza

*

Albums are rated on a scale of one star (poor), two stars (fair), three stars (good) and four stars (excellent). The albums are already released unless otherwise noted.