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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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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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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.