Tom...In His Words

Sometimes, something remarkable can grow from the most unexpected juxtapositions. At 28, Marissa Mulder has a voice like a spring morning and a face to match. Her singing frequently puts experienced cabaret-goers in mind of Blossom Dearie's little-girl innocence, and therefore the least likely material she could tackle would be the gin-soaked, hard-luck, grimy inner-city stories of Tom  Waits. No, she doesn't take the easy step of addressing the songwriter's  lighter material, nor does she try to brighten up any of Mr. Waits's  infamously dark, rumpled anthems. Instead, she takes his darkest and  most profound songs and looks them straight in the eye. Complementing Ms. Mulder's starkly honest interpretations is pianist Jon Weber, who  helps her extract the majestically dysfunctional beauty of texts like  "Broken Bicycles" without merely prettying them up.

Ms. Mulder and Mr. Weber have also released an album of this  show, taped during its premiere week this past March at the  Metropolitan Room, and also titled "Tom... In His Own Words." But, as  with "Every Grain of Sand," Barb Jungr's breakthrough album of Bob Dylan songs from 2002, one hopes that this album is just the beginning,  rather than the culmination, of the singer's involvement with the  songwriter.

Ms. Mulder's song list includes a few of Mr. Waits's  best-known songs ("Ol '55," "(Looking for) the Heart of Saturday Night,"  "Jersey Girl"), as well as some idiosyncratic choices, like "Alice,"  and "Broken Bicycles," the latter including an unexpected allusion to Al  Jolson's hit, "The Anniversary Song." To her credit, Ms. Mulder has  also made a point to recite a sampling of the famous Waits monologues,  especially from his 1975 live album "Nighthawks at the Diner," an  especially astute move since Mr. Waits's post-beat-poet style involves the spoken word almost as much as that which is sung. Indeed, many  listeners might not even be willing to concede that the deep-throated  growls usually emitting from Mr. Waits's throat should be described as  singing. (There's an entire subset of YouTube videos wherein Mr. Waits's  vocals are synched to images of the Cookie Monster, but obviously Mr.  Waits, who has described his scabrous voice as "Louis Armstrong meets  Ethel Merman in hell," is obviously in on the joke.) 

Which brings us to what Ms. Mulder has left out of her program, and that's Mr. Waits's long-running series of comic songs, like  "Step Right Up," his carnival barker's answer to "Trouble" ("In River  City," that is), or "The Piano Has Been Drinking." These songs, which reveal a sledge-hammer sense of humor reminiscent of Thelonious Monk,  are essential entries in the Waits oeuvre. Yet his comedy is largely built on mocking his own persona, and, obviously, no one else can do a  self-parody of Tom Waits. Yet one hopes that Ms. Mulder and Mr. Weber  will continue exploring Mr. Waits's music, and that they might be able to find their way into his humor like noone has been able to do before.