T Bone Burnett: Tooth Of Crime : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

The best song on T Bone's relentlessly noir new album is "Kill Zone," a lyrical, Roy Orbison-style ballad — which Orbison himself co-wrote right before his death in 1988. That fact only hints at the oddity of this collection: Burnett, best known as producer to the stars (Robert Plant/Alison Krauss, John Mellencamp) and curator of soundtracks (The Big Lebowski, O Brother, Where Art Thou?), started writing these songs years ago for a revamped production of Sam Shepard's 1972 play of the same name, about a washed-up rock star. Only bits were used, and Burnett didn't finish the songs until recently.

The bluesy result bristles with echoing spy-movie guitars, clattering layers of percussion and trippy, effects-altered vocals — Burnett pushes his trademark three-dimensional production into an almost hallucinatory vividness. And the lyrics are nearly as evocative, with Burnett issuing detective-novel threats ("I can stir you like a Bloody Mary") and spinning dystopian sci-fi fantasies ("I was conceived in a behavior station, light-years from civilization"). But too often, on songs such as the droney "Dope Island" (a duet with ex Sam Phillips), Burnett's melodies veer between off-puttingly strange and nonexistent. Where's Roy when you need him?