The Chinese finger trap is a toy made of straw that is a loosely woven tube about a half-inch in diameter and five inches long. A player inserts an index finger into each end. When the player tries to pull out his fingers, the tube contracts and traps his fingers. The harder he pulls, the tighter the trap becomes.

The only way to release the trapped fingers is to bring the hands together. The tube then expands enough for the fingers to be gently withdrawn.

Tom Waits' unique, rough and apocalyptic stylism at times threatens to be his own finger trap. The album opener on Real Gone, "Top of the Hill," is so clamorous, primitive and dark as to be a threatening storm cloud of Waits' own destruction in the sound and fury of sonic nihilism.

However, Waits quickly follows up that attention-getting overture to this American gothic opus with the gentle handclasp of melody and misery in the sea shanty-like "Hoist that Rag." "How's It Gonna End" is another superlative success as an eerie ode to hopeless destitution.

Waits generally avoids all social and topical commentary in his gritty little story-songs, but it is hard not to detect an exasperated currency in "Tomorrow," a song about a soldier writing home. It contains such reflective lines as "Trying to say is don't they pray/To the same God that we do?/And tell me how does God/Choose, who's prayers does he/Refuse...."

- Rambles
written by Tom Schulte
published 15 January 2005