Tooth of Crime

Description

Tooth of Crime is a full-length album by the American singer, songwriter, and producer T-Bone Burnett, released on Nonesuch Records in May 2008. The album is a selection of music written by Burnett for the 1996 production of Sam Shepard’s play The Tooth of Crime.

While T Bone Burnett spent most of the ’90s and the first years of the new millennium honing his craft as a producer, he cautiously re-emerged as a songwriter and recording artist with 2006’s The True False Identity, which was his first new album in 14 years and prompted his first concert tour since 1986. A mere two years later, Burnett has returned with another new disc, Tooth of Crime, and while this project has long been in the works, it’s still significant and welcome since it finally appeared at all. The ten songs on Tooth of Crime were originally created as accompaniment for a revised staging of Sam Shepard’s play of the same name, which debuted in 1996 (one song, «Kill Zone», obviously dates back even farther, since the late Roy Orbison is credited as co-author), and while it’s likely Burnett savored the opportunity to linger over this material before taking it into the studio, the performances here sound fresh and thoughtful – like a good play – while plenty of analysis and rehearsal went into refining Tooth of Crime’s characters and narrative, there’s still a vital humanity in the work that brings it all to life… Tooth of Crime is a smart, absorbing, and beautifully disquieting collection of songs that could have come from no one else but T Bone Burnett, and it shows that one of America’s best songwriters may be working at a very deliberate pace but he still has some remarkable things left to tell us. [Mark Deming, AMG]

I have to confess that in the larger scheme of things, I always make a point of buying anything that T Bone Burnett releases because generally the man is a genius! I am used to his switches in style, his eccentric and creative songwriting and fabulous production skills. This is an album inspired by the play of the same name by Sam Sheppard though not having seen the play I’m not totally sure how it all fits in. Accompanied by his usual cohorts including Marc Ribot on guitar, Jim Keltner on drums and his ex-wife Sam Phillips contributing vocals, the whole album has a melancholy darkness surrounding it, presumably dictated by the subject matter of the play. It’s a curious and challenging collection of songs and definitely uneasy listening though there are a couple of moments that really work for me. The opening «Anything I Say Can And Will Be Used Against You» has a superb twangyness about it and the usual smart lyrics and characteristic T Bone deadpan vocal delivery. The emotive yet understated «Kill Zone» is fabulous and was co-written with the late Roy Orbison in the ’80s and was one of the last things he did. To be honest, a lot of this feels unlistenable in a conventional sense. It’s well crafted, well written but ultimately deliberately disturbing. You have to admire Burnett’s bravery, although he never has been an artist who has followed the crowd when it comes to his recordings. [Mike Rimmer, Cross Rhythms, September 2008]

> Apple Music (https://music.apple.com/us/album/tooth-of-crime/279678031)

CD tracklist:

01. Anything I Say Can and Will Be Used Against You – 4:02
02. Dope Island – 4:16
03. The Slowdown – 4:43
04. Blind Man – 1:22
05. Kill Zone – 4:19
06. The Rat Age – 5:30
07. Swizzle Stick – 5:10
08. Telepresence (Make The Metal Scream) – 3:06
09. Here Come the Philistines – 3:33
10. Sweet Lullaby – 3:24