Tom Waits’ Eccentric ‘The Black Rider’ Also Ruined

30th anniversary edition is expectedly mediocre

Before fully diving into the crap reissues of 2024, my review pile still has some crap 2023 reissues that are still sitting here. So to get them out of my way, a review is better late than never, right?

Even for Tom Waits, The Black Rider is eccentric if not downright weird. He was already making odd records, but at least Bone Machine or Swordfishtrombones have identifiable rhythmic structures and some coherent melodies. Here, you’ve got intentionally grating train whistles and William S. Burroughs guiding you through what sounds like an early 20th century rendering of hell. More than any other Waits album, The Black Rider must be heard as a full record to even make sense; otherwise, it sounds like some raving lunatic is about to attack you.

Started in 1989 but completed in 1993, The Black Rider features Waits’ songs from The Black Rider: The Casting of the Magic Bullets, a theater production based on the German folktale “Der Freischütz.” Robert Wilson directed the play from the story adapted by Burroughs. In this telling, a clerk tries to marry an old hunter’s daughter but first must prove his worth. Unable to successfully hunt, the clerk makes a deal with the devil for some magic bullets (the stipulation being that the devil controls a few bullets). The clerk impresses the old huntsman, but unintentionally kills the bride with the last shot. Burroughs compared the magic bullets to heroin, and the play’s ending obviously alludes to him accidentally killing his wife, Joan Vollmer, in 1951.

Tom Waits and Greg Cohen worked on the music, with a few lyrics/spoken contributions by Burroughs (the rest by Waits). No matter the context or lack thereof, The Black Rider is utterly bizarre yet often captivating. It’s not a rock album, rather a dark, hilarious, and somewhat chaotic experimental European cabaret record that prioritizes ominous horns and particularly unusual percussion over guitars or drum sets. The most conventional it gets is when Waits sounds like a deranged 1920s jazz singer, like on “I’ll Shoot The Moon,” “Lucky Day,” or “The Last Rose Of The Summer,” the latter being this album’s closest thing to Rain Dogs’ “Anywhere I Lay My Head.” Otherwise, Waits spends the record telling segments of the story, growling his way through these eerie soundscapes of droning horns and hellish percussion. Sometimes he sings traditionally organized lyrics, other times he rants his way through paragraphs of his or Burroughs’ writing. It’s certainly an acquired taste, and definitely not the Waits album to start with, but for more patient listeners, there’s plenty to dive into.

Like the rest of Tom Waits’ recent Island Records catalog reissues, Chris Bellman mastered 192kHz/24 files of The Black Rider (marketed as a 30th anniversary reissue, though more a coincidence than a specific commemoration) from which Alex Abrash cut lacquers. For this and Bone Machine, the only original pressings were UK imports that now command very high prices, and just like the recent Bone Machine reissue, this was a greatly missed opportunity. The Black Rider’s original CD master by Ken Perry at A&M Studios wasn’t perfect, but this vinyl reissue is worse. Everything sounds as if plastered to a wall, with any dynamic delicacy and instrument physicality lost. Bass is a congealed mess, and the whole presentation is annoying and dull. And as expected for a 56-minute single LP cut to lacquer, Abrash’s cut is extremely quiet (though not to the extent of Bone Machine) and the 180g Precision black vinyl pressing is fairly noisy, albeit not too distracting.

Bellman’s 192kHz/24bit files sound different than the original CD and arguably better, but that depends on preference. On the hi-res stream/download, the high frequencies sound more natural and there’s more bass, but the midrange is slightly yet noticeably boosted in a way that clouds everything up a bit. Still, textural nuance is better and some of the harsher sounds are less grainy. There’s no sonically perfect version of The Black Rider, but whatever mastering you prefer, stick to digital since I doubt the UK original LP is worth the $200.