Tom Waits - "What's He Building?"

Tom Waits has always been a master of painting a picture through his songs. Whether it is from a smoky bar at 3.00am or from the streets on the wrong side of some seedy town.... the story is usually dark and always sounds like he could already be on his 2nd bottle of bourbon. But that's also the reason we like Tom Waits. We sure don't want to hear some happy love song from him. The brilliant thing about "What's He Building" is that he has combined the neighbourhood weird loner stereotype with the garage homebody tool guy. But of course, this guy isn't restoring a car or anything like that.... he must be up to something sinister. It recalls so many images from childhood of reclusive neighbours in unkempt houses and even scenes from movies. It also reminds me of the murderer in Alice sebold's novel "The Lovely Bones" but that may just be me and other people might connect it with something else. It is fascinating in the same way Hitchcock's "Rear Window" was... we don't have any evidence of anything untoward going on, but in the mind of the observer, there is so much going on. Paranoia has never sounded so good.