You've gotta love Tom Waits. Whether for the shear amount of beauty and sorrow one man can release to the world, or simply for the time he's stuck at it, and like a fine wine, got even better over time. He doesn't need your love, but give it to him all the same.

On October 4, Mr.Waits will release 'Real Gone', his, er, whatever number it is album, people have stopped counting... Notably it's his first ever record without piano. SHOCKER! Tom says "Real Gone is an electric pill box... a homogeneous concoction of mood elevators, mind liberators and downers, an alchemical universe of rattling chains, oscillating rhythms and nine-pound hammers."

The record features all these talented folk: Canned Heat's Larry Taylor, Guns N’ Roses (21st C)/Primus' Brain Mantia, another Primus-er and bassist, Les Claypool, Casey X Waits – a collaborator on Waits’ ‘Bloody Money’ LP of 2002, Marc Ribot of Los Cubanos Postizos (he last worked with Tom on ‘85’s ‘Raindogs’), and guitarist/banjo-strummer Harry Cody, part of the nineties’ Scando-US group Shotgun Messiahs and his co-writer, co-producer and his wife Kathleen Brennan.

The tracklisting is:

'Top of the Hill'
'Hoist That Rag'
'Sins of My Father'
'Shake It'
'Don’t Go Into That Barn'
'How’s It Gonna End'
'Metropolitan Glide'
'Dead and Lovely'
'Circus'
'Trampled Rose'
'Green Grass'
'Baby Gonna Leave Me'
'Clang Boom Steam'
'Make It Rain'
'Day After Tomorrow'.

DiScuss: What's your favourite Tom Waits record? For anyone who has never heard Tom, someone else please set them straight...