T Bone Burnett
Tooth of Crime (Nonesuch)
ESSENTIAL "Dope Island"
"People tell me I look like hell. Well, I am hell." So go the first lines on the predatory "Anything I Say Can and Will Be Used Against You," from T Bone Burnett's second album in as many years after a 14-year recording hiatus. Burnett has stayed busy, of course, as a Grammy-winning producer and arranger on high-profile projects ranging from the "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" soundtrack to last year's acclaimed Robert Plant and Alison Krauss collaboration, "Raising Sand." He's also helmed albums by the likes of Bob Dylan, Elvis Costello, and Tony Bennett, although his touch here is decidedly darker. "Tooth of Crime" is an atmospheric, enigmatic collection that examines fame and its fallout - isolation, disillusionment - and it, too, springs from collaboration. Inspired by his 1996 score for friend and playwright Sam Shepard's "Tooth of Crime (Second Dance)," a surreal story about rock stardom and clashing egos, Burnett has fashioned a sumptuously spooky, if lyrically opaque, work that feels both spacious and claustrophobic. Nowhere are these contrasting qualities more evident than on the deranged David Lynch-meets-Coen Brothers noir twang of "The Rat Age" or the meditative hoodoo blues of "Sweet Lullaby." A pungent highlight is the destitute "Dope Island," sung with smoke-and-velvet-voiced languor by Burnett's ex-wife, Sam Phillips. [Jonathan Perry]
