mp3: Tom Waits - Murder In The Red Barn

I’m not a massive Tom Waits fan, but I’m very, very keen on his 1992 album Bone Machine, and this is one of the best tracks on it. It’s a pretty terrifying song, all that autumnal, dying imagery, all the unanswered questions - “is that blood on the tree or is it autumn’s red blaze…?”; a friend of mine likes the irony in the lines “Now Slam the Crank from Wheezer slept outside last night and froze” and “One plays a violin, and sleeps inside a fridge”, but then he’s an English teacher and it’s his job.

I love the hoarseness of the whole thing and the way Waits sings “There’s nothing strange about an axe with bloodstains in the barn; there’s always some killin’ you got to do around the farm“, like he’s really savouring it, axe in hand.

Apparently there really was a Murder in the Red Barn, and while Steven’s away I have no problems in hijacking Stayfun for my own sick ends, as a means of education and enlightenment, and while you’re there, someone made a film out of it too. Go on, knock yourself out on the Red Barn Murder.

I can’t help thinking if flies could sing, they’d sound almost exactly like Tom Waits on Bone Machine.

Buy.