Tom Waits announces new vinyl reissue of ‘Blood Money’ and ‘Alice’
Tom Waits has just announced that a vinyl reissue of his 2002 twin albums, Alice and Blood Money, is forthcoming. The two records reach their 20th anniversary this year, and Waits will see them pressed onto translucent blue (Alice) and red (Blood Money) vinyl to celebrate.
The reissues are scheduled to find their place on record store shelves and Wait’s online merchandise website on October 7th. The pre-orders for the records are available now on his online store.
To commemorate the reissue, Tom Waits has released two live recordings of tracks taken from each of the albums, including ‘Fish and Bird’ from Alice and ‘All The World Is Green’ from Blood Money.
The newly released live version of ‘All The World Is Green’ gives a Southern Spain feel to the original track. It was recorded when Waits played in Milan in 2008, during his Glitter and Doom tour. ‘Fish and Bird’, meanwhile, has been taken from a 2004 concert that Waits played in London and is something of a stripped-back rendition, with simple piano keys and vocals.
Both Blood Money and Alice featured far less complex string arrangements than Waits’ previous studio efforts. He had said at the time that “too many of [my] songs were drowning in strings. I didn’t want to hear another blasted violin. So, we found string players who felt the same way about their instrument, formed an odd, skeletal chamber orchestra and tried to avoid all the old familiar phrases where strings love to play.”
Waits released the two albums after his and Kathleen Brennan’s collaboration with the playwright Robert Wilson, who had contributed to The Black Rider, Waits’ 1989 album. Wilson had also used a number of the tracks from Alice and Blood Money in his plays, including the 2000 musical, Woyzeck.
Check out the newly shared live recordings below.
