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Tooth of Crime is a smart, absorbing, and beautifully disquieting collection of songs that could have come from no one else but T Bone Burnett, and it shows that one of America's best songwriters may be working at a very deliberate pace but he still has some remarkable things left to tell us.
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Guitarist Marc Ribot adds a little flash to the gray affair, but Burnett prefers subtlety, which may have worked in theatre but not so much on disc.
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Burnett has fashioned a sumptuously spooky, if lyrically opaque, work that feels both spacious and claustrophobic.
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Had the album been inspired by any other play, that ambiguity would be a problem. Given the vagueness of the source material, however, Burnett's interpretation makes perfect sense.
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Much of the album features a heavily minor-saturated tone complimented by dissonant brass chords and harmonies that emphasize the play’s catastrophic surrealism.
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Q MagazineBut even knowing that [it's inspired by a Sam Shepard play], it's impossible to tell what's going on. [June 2008, p.149]
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The lyrics are nearly as evocative, with Burnett issuing detective-novel threats ("I can stir you like a Bloody Mary") and spinning dystopian sci-fi fantasies. But too often, on songs such as the droney 'Dope Island' (a duet with ex Sam Phillips), Burnett's melodies veer between off-puttingly strange and nonexistent.
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Between the singer/songwriter's hectoring-preacher delivery and predictable surf-guitar-noir arrangements, the result is one dreary sermon.
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It’s a sonic adventure thanks to Burnett’s current signatures: booming drum kits sans cymbals, knotty guitars, lyrics sung through amplifiers, and an open, airy quality that’s the antithesis of modern rock production.
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Mr. Burnett’s songs for the show are the basis for his new album, and a decade of marinating and reworking has only deepened their black-humor charm.
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While there is no doubting the power of Marc Ribot’s off-kilter twanging or the noirish density of the music, the songs don’t really work on their own.