UZANNE VEGA “delivers her songs on 99.9 F with a tender

inside the song

“New Suzanne Vega, Tom Waits

"XB EW WATTS worth
-. AE the wait; new Vega |
oe - verses are verities;
- Brazilian. prima — Marina
Lima.::
“Tom Waits — Bone Machine,
Island Records 1922 ’
‘Waits in a recent interview on
his creative process: “I get into a
spell, and it all comes easy. | don’t
labor over it. 1 go inside the song.
- “tthink you make yourself an
‘antenna for songs and songs want
to be around you. And then they
” bring other songs along, and then
they're all sittin’ around. And

” - they're drinkin’ your beer, and

they're sleeping on the floor. And
they are using the phone, they're
rude, | thankless little f————
So Waits doesn’t labor over this
’ stuff, | won't.

It’s dark. it grates and clangs. It’s
sentimental. It’s twisted. It sounds
like it was recorded in the devil's
outhouse just this side of the river

Styx. .

: is first full release of new ma-
terial since the 1987 soundtrack to
the stage play Frank's Wild Years,
is a 50-50 collaboration with his
wife Kathleen Brennan.

Waits feeds the spirit, He gathers

.the hackneyed expressions most of
us deploy as linguistic stock-in-
trade, presses them into the greasy
pan of his baking brain and turns
the stuff of mental sloth and
short-form communicatian into
leavened sustenance.

A recent first-time trip into the
Bible results in a fine gospel mo-
ment — fesus Gonna Be Here.
And oddly enough it informs the
epiphany at the ccre of a song
co-written with Keith Richards,

’ That Feel.

The 16 raw vignettes here have

made it a good year for popular
* music. Waits pinches out another

Michael Becker
RECORD REVIEW

gern-studded loaf.
Suzanne Vega — 99.9 F, A&M
Records Inc., 1992

More incantation in the folky
afterglow.

From her self-titled debut seven
years ago, Vega has progressively
developed to become a songwriter
who has elevated the rhetorical
question in lyric to a fine meta-
phoric plain-spokeness.

Stylistically, her latest release is:
much like its rewarding precursor,
Days Of Open Hand. Producer
Mitchell Froom seems to have
taken a sonic cue from the surpris-
ingly successful DNA Tom’s Diner
remix released last year.

Vega’s disparate assembly of
musicians — Bruce Thomas (The
Attractions) on bass, Jerry Marotta
(Peter Gabriel) on drums, David
Hidalgo (Los Lobos), Tchad Blake
and Richard Thompson on guitars
— works well together.

The release finds Vega delving a
little deeper beneath the skin,
moving beyond grey matter and
mind to explore diluted personal
expectations at the arierial level of
tissue and bone.

She says that “if you scratch
the surface of people, strip away
the outsides, on the inside you see
the similarities.”

Vega does just that. With her
trademark succinct half whisper,

See Lima page 34

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Our 1 Hour Photo Dept.
benefits from enlargement!

The 1 Hour Photo
Department at the North
Voncouver London Drugs
store has been enlarged over
70%! But it’s not just
bigger, it’s better, with new
equipment that will raise
even our high standards for
quality. Plus cn on-site
Enlargement Lab.

Don’t forget, we're still
open while we do the

remaining changes in the rest of the
store. And when it’s all done in early
well be ready to

November,
celebrate!

Gb Nee already known for
the quality of our
photofinishing. Now we've.
added the most technologically
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y make your pictures ‘even.
. better.
And now your prize photos
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an on-site Enlargement Lab to
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quality enlargements up to 12”x18”.
Come see the improvements. 69

liza (Flizebeth) Anderson,
1 Hour Phote Department Manager
Nerth Vancouver London Drugs
fonsdaie at 2st Street