Soundings by Kirk Robertson

Two recent releases from true originals showcase, albeit differently, the expressive possibilities of the human voice.

Real Gone (Anti-) is the latest from Tom Waits. On the one hand we can take the title to refer to the Beat concept of being "crazy," hip, not as in being linked to hop, but rather of being out there in an idiot savant kind of way, living life at the margins of sanity, pushing the edges, improvising both content and meaning. On the other hand, we can also take it to mean being ravished, ready to depart, the persona as wasted voice.

Both seem to apply. Waits uses, to great effect, the varying textures of his voice as a visceral instrument, often a percussive one. The opener, "Top of the Hill," is a case in point; his multi-tracked vocals are scats interrupted now and then by blasts of turntable stutter which effectively deliver lyrics like: "There's very little leeway/I seen a mattress on the freeway/The moon rises over dog street/Jefferson said everything's reet/Have all the lights burned/Out on heaven again/I'll never roll the number seven again."

On his previous recent releases, Waits has used his piano and an assortment of "esoteric" instruments (harmonium, calliope, tuba) to frame his meditation on the frailty of the human condition. Here these surrealistic musings are represented by his-now rasping whisper, now roaring incantation-vocals accompanied, and punctured, by the jangled and tangled, stabbing guitar riffs of Marc Ribot and Larry Taylor. It's a raw and stripped-down approach that works to startling effect. On "Metropolitan Glide," Waits idea of a dance tune, we get lyrics such as "The peacock and the mean black sawn/The rain shower and the high heel shoe/Bombay money and I know I can do it/The sink hole and the victory dance/Its in the pocket in the real tight pants," presented as a trashcan sonata, a junkyard symphony of cacophonous sounds. Elsewhere we get warnings, "Don't Go Into That Barn;" "Circus," an almost-spoken word reverie, delivered through a long-lost megaphone, on running away; the once-was-Bluegrass lament of "Trampled Rose;" the ten-minute, "Sins of My Father," a purging of the past; and "Dead and Lovely," the noir-esque story of the murder of a girl who thought she had a bullet proof smile and could stand up in the deep end. All in all it's 'a chilling evocations of some particularly claustrophobic moments.

Speaking of chilling brings us to Iceland's best-known export, Bjork, whose new effort is Medulla (Atlantic/Elektra). The title here refers to both the marrow or pith of something, and to the medulla oblongata, that portion of the brain that controls our sympathetic nervous system -things such as blood flow and breathing. Breathing, breath is the key here; as is the idea of the voice as an instrument of spiritual expression. And, she conjures some strange and otherworldly spirits. Everything is based on the sonic idea of the voice, that you use your ears to "hear" the voice. What you hear is not only Bjork's totally remarkable and otherworldly vocalizations of love songs of a sort-from Icelandic folk and a poem by ee cummings to her own original soliloquies-but also that voice in combination with those of a throat singer, an Icelandic choir, the London Choir, Mr. Bungle's Mike Patton, and turntables samples and programming from Rhazel and Matmos. The result is an effort that is truly mystical, but more in the deviant and mystifying sense than the new age one. Bjork's voice swoops and falls, undulates and ululates, sighs against measured piano lines and becomes beat-boxed and made-up polyphony. Her deconstructed cries of ecstasy and anguish, of loss and hope become an ethereal and orgiastic fusion of the human voice and technology; a message in a bottle, but one from another galaxy.