ALBUMMER! 48: Scarlett Johansson's "Anywhere I Lay My Head"

Oh, that one actor from Ghostworld did an album? Cool, I'll have to check it out.

Captain Drew :D

I like Emily's shirt

"The piano's been drinkin' and it's embarrassing me" - Tom Waits

This album is truly baffling. My attitude towards covers is “don’t bother unless you can put an interesting twist on them”. I think 2M2LN pulls this off (that cover of “This Charming Man” was awesome btw), but ScarJo very much fails to here. So it managed to make Tom Waits’ music boring, but also rope in David Bowie for two tracks? My damn head is spinning.

Wait a minute, not knowing what Scarlett Johannsen looks like is weird in my book. Nick Cave is a cool duder though.

I'm big in Japan, big in Japan. Also, Tom Waits pre Rain Dogs is very listenable.

@googly: The Early Years, Volume Two is a really good compilation of the pre-Swordfishtrombones discography. I think Nighthawks at the Diner works super well as a full uninterrupted listen, but I wouldn’t recommend any one song off it. Really the only album from that era I wouldn’t listen to again is Foreign Affairs.

I really don’t like The Black Rider and his soundtrack albums either, but those are in the Brennan co-writing era. I recently ranked every single Tom Waits song (because I’m a psychopath) and found the top of my list was stuff from Mule Variations, Bone Machine, and Blood Money. But out of 323ish songs, I would only avoid a couple dozen of them altogether.

In terms of famous covers of Tom Waits songs: Albummer alumnus Rod Stewart did a pretty popular version of Downtown Train.

I'm also with Drew on Tom Waits songs often being much better in live versions. There is a pro recording of a 2008 show in Atlanta, which hasn't been released officially, but is on Youtube in its entirety. It's like 26 songs, and every single arrangement is incredible to the point where I often cannot really do the studio versions anymore.

They take a song like Hoist that Rag from Real Gone, which is sparse and dissonant even for Tom Waits standards, and just make it sing in a way I didn't think was possible.

@thaquoth: I was at that Atlanta show and I was mesmerized and scrambling to figure out which songs were which because they were so different. It was a magical experience.

The explosion episode is the best one. They went too far with attacking tryhards.

This was during the peak of ScarJo's Woody Allen era so Tom Waits for her might be what Sidney Bechet is to Allen but she didn't want to spend every weekend performing at the Carlyle. And Scoop is an underrated movie and the best one they did together.

Was Jeremy using a CCTV camera to film himself initially?

gotta agree with Drew here, BTMI!'s cover of Anywhere I Lay My Head is good as fuck (and was also my intro to Tom Waits). There's a chiptune breakdown in it

Good ep again! Show good, Tom Waits good. I love Waits's version of Shenandoah feat. Keith Richards - it sounds like what you'd expect it to.

My favorite Tom Waits album is the movie Mystery Men

This album was recorded 2 hours away from where I live in Maurice, LA because why the hell not?

I love how Emily always seems to do research on these albums and brings facts about them to the discussion.

When I think of the 4 or 5 years I worked at Best Buy, I think of this album for some reasons.

I never heard any of it, but there were a half dozen copies that collected dust on the racks for several months that I often walked by.

I was introduced to Tom Waits in 1993. Mike Judge featured several videos from Bone Machine on Beavis & Butthead. It blew my 14 year old mind!

Even at 14 I loved abrasive music.

I was introduced to Tom Waits in 1993. Mike Judge featured several videos from Bone Machine on Beavis & Butthead. It blew my 14 year old mind!

Curious if you can be a try hard at 14 in a tiny town in the middle of the Michigan rust belt.

Listen to Tom Waits and kill thineself