{"product_id":"tom-waits-franks-wild-years","title":"Tom Waits - Frank's Wild Years","description":"\u003cp\u003eTom Waits closed his great mid-1980s run with Franks Wild Years, a 1987 album that plays like a battered vaudeville show staged in a back-alley bar, here on 180 gram vinyl.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe record completes the loose trilogy that began with Swordfishtrombones and Rain Dogs, and grew out of the stage musical Waits wrote with Kathleen Brennan for Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre Company. It follows Frank, a small-town accordion player whose dreams of fame curdle into something stranger, and Waits uses the story as an excuse to explore every corner of his junkyard sound.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"Hang On St. Christopher\" kicks things off with a distorted, megaphone howl and clanking horns. \"Innocent When You Dream\" appears in two versions, one a woozy barroom singalong and the other a crackling, old-time recording, while \"Way Down in the Hole\" is a sly gospel stomp later made famous as the theme to The Wire. \"Cold Cold Ground\" offers a moment of rough-hewn tenderness.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePump organ, wheezing accordion and rattling percussion tumble through the mix, and Waits slips between crooner, carnival barker and lounge lizard with total conviction.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIt is a gloriously strange, deeply human record, best heard loud with the lights low and a drink close at hand.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Alliance Entertainment","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57499332182321,"sku":"602448898333","price":33.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0704\/2026\/7313\/files\/Tom_Waits-Franks_Wild_Years.jpg?v=1794506321","url":"https:\/\/vinyl.com\/products\/tom-waits-franks-wild-years","provider":"Vinyl.com","version":"1.0","type":"link"}