Ay-yi-yi. Let's hear it for the unanswerable question.
Tom Waits is magnificent. His first album was released in 1973 and his most recent (so far as I know) in 2004, so there's an immense amount of material from which to pick and try and see what you like. I only own three or four of his albums, of which Rain Dogs (1985) and Blood Money (2002) are my favorites right now. I was introduced to him by the film Smoke, which uses "Innocent When You Dream (Barroom Version)" as its credit music, and lesser_celery sent me Rain Dogs sometime last year. He sounds . . . like himself, I suppose. The adjective "gravelly" is inadequate to describe his voice, which sometimes sounds like forty miles of bad road and sometimes like a falling-down-drunk Muppet and sometimes like a lullaby growl. His songs are murder ballads and American dreams and nightmares, blues and carnivals and seedy myths, and silent afternoons spent watching the sun set over the projects and the trains rattle by. And sometimes he's hilarious. I love his lyrics. I'm not sure I'd have been able to pick a favorite excerpt if he'd come up for that question. He has to be heard.
Jill Tracy has two albums so far, Quintessentially Unreal (1995) and Diabolical Streak (1999). The first of these is simply her on the piano and her voice, which is hushed and cigarette-smoky and full of secrets, like a femme fatale turned parlor magician; the second adds the accompaniment of the Malcontent Orchestra. Her songs are the soundtrack to Edward Gorey—shadowy and precise, full of inexplicable obsessions and strange characters and little intricate touches, and most of them are love songs, if you allow for a loose definition of "love." Very turn-of-the-century, gaslights and seances and slyly amused morbidity. I can't even remember how I found her in the first place, but she's provided epigraphs and inspiration for several stories now, and I'm only sorry I'm never on the West Coast: I don't think she ever performs on this edge of the continent. I like her a lot. I think you might, too.
Dave Carter and Tracy Grammer are no longer extant: the summer that I discovered them, he died of a heart attack. She still performs solo, however, and they left behind three incredible albums, When I Go (1998), Tanglewood Tree (2000), and Drum Hat Buddha (2001). They're mythic. I'm not sure there's another word. Their music is folk in the tradition of Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, Joan Baez, but it's grounded intimately in folklore and mythology, American and everything in the kitchen sink. Arthuriana and the Midwest. Jesus and Tibetan raven goddesses dancing on piled skulls. Demon lovers and Native American prayers. Their lyrics sometimes fall over themselves with allusions and images and tips of the hat to songwriters to have come before, but it all holds together through some impossible trick of gravity, and they are the only people I've ever heard successfully use Sumerian in a folksong ("The Mountain"). His death both saddens and annoys me: I can't imagine but that they would have changed the landscape of folk music in this century.
I have to say, I'm not sure if Dave Carter and Tracy Grammer would be to your tastes, but I'm inclined to try you out on them for the sheer damn weird-and-wonderfulness of their music. If there aren't clips available at their website, let me know and I'll send you a few songs. And if they're not, there's always Jill Tracy and Tom Waits.
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Tom Waits is magnificent. His first album was released in 1973 and his most recent (so far as I know) in 2004, so there's an immense amount of material from which to pick and try and see what you like. I only own three or four of his albums, of which Rain Dogs (1985) and Blood Money (2002) are my favorites right now. I was introduced to him by the film Smoke, which uses "Innocent When You Dream (Barroom Version)" as its credit music, and
Jill Tracy has two albums so far, Quintessentially Unreal (1995) and Diabolical Streak (1999). The first of these is simply her on the piano and her voice, which is hushed and cigarette-smoky and full of secrets, like a femme fatale turned parlor magician; the second adds the accompaniment of the Malcontent Orchestra. Her songs are the soundtrack to Edward Gorey—shadowy and precise, full of inexplicable obsessions and strange characters and little intricate touches, and most of them are love songs, if you allow for a loose definition of "love." Very turn-of-the-century, gaslights and seances and slyly amused morbidity. I can't even remember how I found her in the first place, but she's provided epigraphs and inspiration for several stories now, and I'm only sorry I'm never on the West Coast: I don't think she ever performs on this edge of the continent. I like her a lot. I think you might, too.
Dave Carter and Tracy Grammer are no longer extant: the summer that I discovered them, he died of a heart attack. She still performs solo, however, and they left behind three incredible albums, When I Go (1998), Tanglewood Tree (2000), and Drum Hat Buddha (2001). They're mythic. I'm not sure there's another word. Their music is folk in the tradition of Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, Joan Baez, but it's grounded intimately in folklore and mythology, American and everything in the kitchen sink. Arthuriana and the Midwest. Jesus and Tibetan raven goddesses dancing on piled skulls. Demon lovers and Native American prayers. Their lyrics sometimes fall over themselves with allusions and images and tips of the hat to songwriters to have come before, but it all holds together through some impossible trick of gravity, and they are the only people I've ever heard successfully use Sumerian in a folksong ("The Mountain"). His death both saddens and annoys me: I can't imagine but that they would have changed the landscape of folk music in this century.
I have to say, I'm not sure if Dave Carter and Tracy Grammer would be to your tastes, but I'm inclined to try you out on them for the sheer damn weird-and-wonderfulness of their music. If there aren't clips available at their website, let me know and I'll send you a few songs. And if they're not, there's always Jill Tracy and Tom Waits.