Originally released in 1987 on Island Records, 'Franks Wild Years' is Tom Waits' 10th studio album. Titled for a play of the same name and authored by Waits and his wife, Kathleen Brennan, 'Franks Wild Years' was performed by Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre Company in 1986. The album divides the story neatly into two acts and although titled 'un operachi romantic', there is no opera in Franks. There is a hilarious touch of operatic styling by Waits himself in the song 'Temptation.' His vocal character varies wildly throughout the work's 17 songs, and is no more impressive than when the gruff, growly singer turns to impeccable Sinatra-esque phrasing on the Vegas number, 'Straight To The Top.' The album is a startling group of lost dreams, bad dreams, dreams that might not even be dreams. The music is nightmarish, ethereal, beautiful. Think broken calliopes played by genius children, horns played at dawn in a graveyard, banjos leaking through practice room walls.
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