This album was Tom Waits' 1999 release, and his thirteenth. The songs range from Big in
Japan, a
smooth but tough rock song, to Come On Up To the House, a powerful telling of a world's troubles. Waits did good again, striking a strange chord with Chocolate Jesus, and tugging your thought strings with Black Market
Baby.
An excerpt from Mule Variations'-
Get Behind the Mule
Punctuated birds on the power line
In a Studebaker with the Birdie
Joe Joaks
I'm diggin' all the way to China
With a silver
spoon
While the hangman fumbles with the noose,
boy
The hangman fumbles with the noose
Got to get behind the Mule
In the morning and plow